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Autobiography of Froebel. 






AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



OF 



FRIEDRICH FROEBEL 



i«i: 



TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY 
EMILIE MICHAELIS, 

Head MisfrefS of the Croydon Kinderrfarten and Preiwvatovy School, 

AND 

H. KEATLEY MOORE, Mus.Bac, B.A., 



i 



^^■^f Examiner in Music to the Froebel Society, and Vice- Chairman of the §royden 



Kindergarten C 'ompany. 



("Uom^, \ti w^ live Ux mxx rltilten/' 




SYRACUSE, N. Y. : 

C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER, 

1889. 



Copyright, 1889, by C. W. BARDEEN. 



German Books on Pedagogy. 

1. Comenins. GrosseTJnterncMsUhre. Miteiner Einleitung, "J. C'omenius, 
sein Leben und "Werken," von Lindner. Price $1.50. 

-i,. Helvetius. Von Menscken, seineii Geisteskraften und seiner Erziehung. 
Mit einer Einleitung, " CI. Adr. Helvetius, 1715-1771. Ein Zeit- und Lebens- 
bild," von Lindneu. 12mo, pp. 339. Price $1.50. 

3. Pestalozzi. Wie Gertrud Hire Kinder lehrt. Mit einer Einleitung, 
"J. H. Pestalozzi's Leben, Werke, undGrundsatze," vouRiedEl. Price $1.25. 

4. Niemeyer. Grundsdtze die Erziehung und des Unterrichtes. Mit 
einer Einleitung "Aug. Herni. Niemeyer, sein Leben und Werken," von 
Lindner. 2 vols. Price $3.00. 

5. Diesterweg. Rhenische Blatter. Mit einer Einleitung, "F. A. W. 
Diesterweg," von Jessen. Price $1.25. 

6. Jacotot. Universal Unterricht. Mit einer "Darstellung des Lebens 
und der Lehre Jacotot's," von Goering. 12mo, pp. 364. Price $3.75. 

7. Frobel. Padagogische Schriften. Herausgegeben von Seidel. 3 
vols. Price $7.00. 

8. Fichte. Padagogisch Schriften und Ideen. Mit " biographiseher 
Einleitung und gedrangter Darstellung von Fichte's Padagogik," von Kef- 
ERSTEiN. Price $2.00. 

9. Martin Luther. Padagogische Schrifte. Mit Einleitung von Schu- 
mann. Price $1.50. 

10. Herder als Pddagog. Von Morres. Price 75 cts. 

11. Geschichte der Pddagogik, in Biographen, Uebersichten, und Proben 
aus padagogischen Hauptwerken. Von Niedergesaess. Price $2.50. 

11. Lexikon der Pddagogik. Von Sander. Price $3.50. 

For sale by 

C. W. BARDEEN, Publisher, Syracuse, N. Y. 



PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



It will be long before we have a biography of Froebel 
to compare with DeGuimp's Pestalozzi^ of which an Eng- 
lish translation has just appeared. Meantime we must 
content ourselves with two long autobiographical letters 
contained in this volume, which, though incomplete, have 
yet the peculiar charm that comes from the candid record 
of genuine impressions. 

The first of these letters, that to the Duke of Meiningen, 
has already appeared in English, in a translation by Miss 
Lucy Wheelock for Barnard's American 'your7ial of Edu- 
cation^ since reprinted in pp. 21-48 of his Kindergarten afid 
Child Culture, {^see p. 146J, and in a small volume under 
the title Autobiography of Froebel (sqq p. 146 J. While a 
faithful attempt to reproduce the original, this translation 
struggled in vain to transform Froebel's rugged and 
sometimes seemingly incoherent sentences into adequate 
and attractive English, so that the long letter has proved 
to most English readers formidable and repellant. But in 
the original it is one of the most charming productions in 
literature, candid and confidential in tone, and detailing 
those inner gropings for ideas that became convictions 
which only an autobiography can reveal. These qualities 
are so admirably preserved in the translation by Miss 
Emily Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore that it seemed to 
leave nothing to be desired. They have not only given 
a faithful rendering, but they have impressed upon it the 
loving touch of faithful disciples. Accordingly I pur- 
chased from the English publishers the American rights 
to this translation ; and have reproduced not onlv this 

(vii) 



viii Autobiography of Froebel. 

letter, but that to the philosopher Krause, with Barop's 
"Critical Moments," and the "Chronological Abstract," 
all from duplicates of the English plates. 

The rest of the volume appears for the first time. The 
Bibliography seemed desirable, and is confined to attain- 
able books likely to be of value to American teachers. 
The Index is full, but not fuller than the fragmentary 
character of the material seemed to require. The Table 
of Contents will also serve to make reference easy to the 
principal evens of Froebel's history. 

In the lives of Pestalozzi and of Froebel many resem- 
blances may be traced. Both were sons of clergymen. 
Both were half-orphans from their earliest recollections. 
Both were unhappy in childhood, were misunderstood,, 
companionless, awkward, clumsy, ridiculed. Both were 
as boys thrown into the almost exclusive society of 
women, and both retained to the last strongly feminine 
characteristics. Both were throughout life lacking in 
executive ability; both were financially improvident. Both 
were dependent for what they did accomplish upon friends, 
and both had the power of inspiring and retaining friend- 
ships that were heroic, Pestalozzi's Krlisi corresponding 
with Froebel's Middendorf. Both became teachers only by 
accident, and after failure in other professions. Both saw 
repeated disaster in the schools they established, and both 
were to their last days pointed at as visionary theorists 
of unsound mind. Both failed to realize their ideas, but both 
planted their ideas so deeply in the minds of others that 
they took enduring root. Both lacked knowledge of 
men, but both knew and loved children, and were happi-" 
est when personally and alone they had children under their 
charge. Both delighted in nature, and found in solitary 
contemplation of flowers and woods and mountains relief 
from the disappointments they encountered among their 
fellows. 



Preface to the American Edition, ix 



But there were contrasts too. Pestalozzi had no family 
tics, while Froebel maintained to the last the closest rela- 
tions with several brothers and their households. Pesta- 
lozzi married at twenty-three a woman older than himself, 
on whom he thereafter relied in all his troubles. Froebel 
deferred his marriage till thirty-six and then seems to have 
regarded his wife more as an advantage to his school than 
as a help-meet to himself. 

Pestalozzi was diffident, and in dress and manner careless 
to the point of slovenliness; Froebel was extravagant in 
his self-confidence, and at times almost a dandy in attire. 
Pestalozzi was always honest and candid, while Froebel 
was as a boy untruthful. Pestalozzi was touchingly hum- 
ble, and eager to ascribe the practical failure of his theories 
to his personal inefficiency; Froebel never acknowledged 
himself in the wrong, but always attributed failure to ex- 
ternal causes. On the other hand, while Froebel was 
equable in temperment, Pestalozzi was moody and im- 
pressionable, flying from extreme gaiety to extreme dejec- 
tion, slamming the door if displeased with a lesson a 
teacher was giving, but coming back to apologize if he 
met a child who smiled upon him. Under Rousseau's in- 
fluence Pestalozzi was inclined to skepticism, and limited 
religious teaching in school to the reading of the gospels, 
and the practice of Christianity ; Froebel was deeply pious, 
and made it fundamental that education should be founded 
plainly and avowedly upon religion. 

Intellectually the contrast is even stronger. While 
Froebel had a university education, Pestalozzi was an 
eminently ignorant man; his penmanship was almost 
illegible, he could not do simple sums in multiplication, 
he could not sing, he could not draw, he wore out all his 
handkerchiefs gathering pebbles and then never looked at 
them afterward. Froebel was not only a reader but a 
scientific reader, always seeking first to find out what 



Autobiography of Froebel. 



others had discovered that he might begin where they 
left off; Pestalozzi boasted that he had not read a book in 
forty years. Naturally, therefore, Pestalozzi was always 
an experimenter, profiting by his failures but always failing 
in his first attempts, and hitting upon his most character- 
istic principles by accident; while Froebel was a theorist, 
elaborating his ideas mentally before putting them in 
practice, and never satisfied till he had properly located 
them in his general scheme of philosophy. 

And yet, curiously enough, it is Pestalozzi who was the 
author. His " Leonard and Gertrude " was read by every 
cottage fireside, while Froebel's writings were intelligible 
only to his disciples. Pestalozzi had an exuberant imag- 
ination and delightful directness and simplicity of ex- 
pression ; Froebel's style was labored and obscure, and 
his doctrines may be better known through the " Child and 
Child Nature " of the Baroness Marenholz von Buelow 
than through his own "Education of Man." 

The account of Froebel's life given in this volume is 
supplemented somewhat by the " Reminiscences " of this 
same Baroness, who became acquainted with him in 1849, 
and was thereafter his most enthusiastic and successful 
apostle. Till some adequate biography appears, that 
volume and this must be relied upon for information of 
the man who shares equally with Pestalozzi the honor of 
educational reform in this century. 

C. W. Bardeen. 

Syracuse, June 10, 1889. 



COMMENTS UPON FROEBEL AND HIS WORK. 



Und als er so, wie Wichard Lange richtig sagt, der 
Apostel des weiblichen Gechlechts geworden war, starb 
er, der geniale, unermiidlich thiitige, von Liebe getragene 
Mann. — Schmidt, Geschichte der Fddagogik, Cothen, 1862, 
iv. 282, 

En resume, Rousseau aurait pu etre deconcerte par les 
inventions pratiques, un peu subtiles parfois, de 1' ingen- 
ieux Froebel. II efit souri, comme tout le monde, des 
artifices par lesquels il obligeait I'enfant a se faire acteur 
au milieu de ses petits camarades, a imiter tour a tour le 
soldat qui monte la garde, le cordonnier qui travaille, le 
cheval qui pietine, I'homme fatigue qui se repose. Mais, 
sur les principes, il se serait mis aisement d'accord avec 
I'auteur de /' Education de V homme^ avec un penseur a I'ame 
tendre et noble;, qui remplagait les livres par les choses, 
qui a une instruction pedantesque substituait 1' education 
interieure, qui aux connaissances positives preferait la 
chaleur du sentiment, la vie intime et profonde de 1' ame, 
qui respectait la liberte et la spontaneite de 1' enfant, qui 
enfin s' efforgait d' ecarter de lui les mauvaises influences 
et de faire a son innocence un milieu digne d' elle — Com- 
payre's Histoire Critique des Doctrines de V Education en 
France depuis le XVIme Siecle, Paris, 1879, ii. 125. 

We might say that his eff"ort in pedagogy consists chiefly 
in organizing into a system the sense intuitions which 
Pestalozzi proposed to the child somewhat at random and 
without direct plan. — Compayre's History of Pedagogy^ 
Payne's translation^ Boston, 1886, p. 449. 

(xi) 



vii Autobiography of Froebel. 

Er war gleich Pestalozzi von den hochsten Ideen der 
Zeit getragen und suchte die Erziehung an diese Ideen 
anzukniipfen. So lange die Mutter nicht nach den Ge- 
setzen der Natur ihr Kind erzieht und bildet und dafiir 
nicht ihr Leben einsetst, so lange — davon geht er aus — 
sindalle Reformen der Schuleauf Sand gebaut. Trotsdem 
verlegt er einen Theil der miitterlichen Aufgabe in den 
Kindergarten, in welchem er die Kinder vor ihre Schul- 
pflichtigkeit vereinigt wissen will, ( \ ) um auf die hiiusliche 
Erziehung ergilnzend und verbessernd einzuwirken, (z) 
um das Kind aus dem Einzelleben heraus Zum Verkehr 
mit seinesgleichenzu fiihren, und (t,) um dem weiblichen 
Geschlechte Gelegenheit zu geben, sich auf seinen erzie- 
herischen Beruf vorzubereiten. — Bohm's Kurzgefasste Ges- 
chichte der Pddagogik, Niirnberg, 1880, p. 134. 

Le jardin d'enfants est evidemment en opposition avec 
I'idee fondamentale de Pestalozzi; car celui-ci avait 
confie entierement a la mere et au foyer domestique la 
tache que Froebel remet, en grande partie, aux jardins 
d'enfants et a sa directrice. A 1' egard des rapports de 
r education domestique, telle qui elle est a 1' heure qu'il 
est, on doit reconnaitre que Frobebel avait un coup-d' oeil 
plus juste que Pestalozzi. — Histoire d' Edtication^ Frederick 
DiTTES, Redolfi's French translation, Paris, 1880, p. 258. 

While others have taken to the work of education their 
own pre-conceived notions of what that work should be, 
Froebel stands consistently alone in seeking in the nature 
of the child the laws of educational action — in ascertaining 
from the child himself how we are to educate him. — Joseph 
Payne, Lectures on the Science and Art of Education, Syracuse, 
1885, P- 254- 

Years afterwards, the celebrated Jahn fthe " Father 
Jahn " of the German gymnastics^ told a Berlin student 
of a queer fellow he had met, who made all sorts of won- 
derful things from stones and cobwebs. This queer fel- 



Coimnents upon Froebel and his Work. xiii 

low was Froebel; and the habit of making out general 
truths from the observation of nature, especially from 
plants and trees, dated from the solitary rambles in the 
Forest. 

As the cultivator creates nothing i"h the trees and plants, 
so the educator creates nothing in the children, — he merely 
superintends the development of inborn faculties. So far 
Froebel agrees with Pestalozzi ; but in one respect he was 
beyond him, and has thus become, according to Michelet, 
the sfreatest of educational reformers. Pestalozzi said 
that the faculties were developed by exercise. Frobel 
added that the function of education was to develop the 
faculties by arousing voluntary activity. Action proceeding 
from inner impulse ( Selbsthdtigkeit ) was the one thing 
needful, and here Froebel as usual refers to God : '' God's 
every thought is a work, a deed." As God is the Creator, 
so must man be a creator also. Living acting, conceiving, 
— these must form a triple cord within every child of man, 
though the sound now of this string, now of that may pre- 
ponderate, and then again of two together. 

Pestalozzi held that the child belonged to the family ; 
Fichte on the other hand, claimed it for society and the 
State. Froebel, whose mind, like that of Frederick Maurice, 
delighted in harmonizing apparent contradictions, and 
who taught that "all progress lay through opposites to 
their reconciliations," maintained that the child belonged 
both to the family and to society, and he would therefore 
have children spend some hours of the day in a common 
life and in well-organized common employments. These 
assemblies of children he would not call schools, for the 
children in them ought not to be old enough for school- 
ing. So he invented the term Kindergarten., garden of 
children, and called the superintendents "children's 
gardeners." — R. H. Quick, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, xix 
edition. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Introductory 1,2 

Letter to the Duke of Meiningen 3-101 

Birth and early life 3, 104 

Enters the girls' school 9 

Goes away from home to Stadt-Ihm 15 

Is apprenticed to a forester 24 

Returns to his father's house 27 

Goes to the University of Jena 28, 105 

Returns home again 35 

Goes to Bamberg as clerk 33 

Becomes land-surveyor 39 

Goes to the Oberf alz as accountant 42 

Soon after to Mecklenberg 42 

Gets small inheritance from his uncle 43 

Goes to Frankfurt 48, 107 

Becomes teacher in the Model School 31, 109 

Visits Pestalozzi 52 

Resigns to become a private tutor 65, 110 

Takes his three pupils to Yverdon , . ^ 77 

Returns to Frankfurt 84 

Goes to the University of Gottingen 84, 111 

Goes to Berlin 89, 111 

Enters the army 91, 111, 120 

Becomes curator in Berlin 96, 111, 121 

Enlists in the army again 100, 121 

Supplementary remarks by the translators 102, 103 

Letter to Krause 104-125 

Begins at Griesheim his ideal work 113, 121 

Undertakes education of his nephews. 121 

Moves to Keilhau 122, 127 

(xiv) 



Autobiography of FroebeL xv 

Note by the translators 126 

Critical Moments in the Froebel Community 127-137 

Froebel goes to the Wartensee 131 

Then to Willisaii 132, 136 

Then to the Orphanage at Burgdorf 135, 136 

Visits Berlin 137 

Notes by the translators 138, 139 

Death of Froebel 138 

Chronological Abstract of Fboebel's Life and Move- 
ment 140-144 

Bibliography op Froebel 145-152 

Index 153-167 



INTRODUCTORY. 




!hE year 1882 was the centenary of Froebel's birth, 
and in the present "plentiful lack" of faithful trans- 
lations of Froebel's own words we proposed to 
the Froebel Society to issue a translation of the 
"Education of Man," which we would undertake to make at 
our own cost, that the occasion might be marked in a manner 
worthy of the English branch of the Kindergarten movement. 
But various reasons prevented the Society from accepting our 
offer, and the lamentable deficiency still continues. We have 
therefore endeavoured to make a beginning by the present work,, 
consisting of Froebel's own words done into English as faithfully 
as we know how to render them, and accompanied with any 
brief explanation of our own that may be essentia] to the clear 
understanding of the passages given. We have not attempted 
to rewrite our author, the better to suit the practical, clear- 
headed, common-sense Enghsh character, but have preferred 
simply to present him in an English dress with his national and 
personal peculiarities untouched. 

In so doing we are quite aware that we have sacrificed interest, 
for in many passages, if not in most, a careful paraphrase of 
Froebel would be much more intelligible and pithy to Enghsh 
readers than a true rendering, since he probably possesses every 
fault of style except over-conciseness ; but we feel that it is better 
to let Froebel speak for himself. 

For the faithfulness of translation we hope our respective 
nationalities may have stood us in good stead. We would, 
however, add that a faithful translation is not a verbal trans- 
lation. The translator should rather strive to write each sentence 
as the author would have written it in English, 



2 Introductory. 

Froebel's opinions; character, and work grow so directly out of 
his Hfe, that we feel the best of his writing that a student of 
the Kindergarten system could begin with is the important 
autobiographical " Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," written in 
the year 1827, but never completed, and in all probability 
never sent to the sovereign whose name it bears. That this 
is the course Froebel would himself have preferred will, we 
think, become quickly apparent to the reader. Besides, in the 
boyhood and the earliest experiences of Froebel's life, we find 
the sources of his whole educational system. That other children 
might be better understood than he was, that other children 
might have the means to live the true child-life that was denied 
to himself, and that by their powers being directed into the right 
•channels, these children might become a blessing to themselves 
and to others, was undoubtedly in great part the motive which 
induced Froebel to describe so fully all the circumstances of his 
pecuHar childhood. We should undoubtedly have a clearer 
comprehension of many a great reformer if he had taken the 
trouble to write out at length the impressions of his life's dawn, 
as Froebel has done. In Froebel's particular case, moreover, it 
is evident that although his account of himself is unfinished, we 
fortunately possess all that is most important for the under- 
standing of the origin of the Kindergarten system. After the 
" Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," we have placed the shorter 
account of his hfe which Froebel included in a letter to the 
philosopher Krause. A sketch of Barop's, which varies the 
point of view by regarding the whole movement more in its outer 
aspec than even Froebel himself is able to do, seemed to us also 
desirable to translate ; and finally we have added also a carefully 
prepared *' chronology " extended from Lange's list. Our trans- 
lation is made from the edition of Froebel's works published 
by Dr. Wichard Lange at Berlin in 1862. 

Emilie Michaelis. 
H. Keatley Moore. 

The Croydon Kindergarten, 
January 1886. 




AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL. 

(a letter to the duke OF MEININGEN.) 

WAS born at Oberweissbach, a village in the 
Thuringian Forest, in the small principality of 
Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. on the 21st April, 1782. 
My father was the principal clergyman, or pastor, 
there.* (He died in 1802.) I was early initiated into the conflict 
of life amidst painful and narrowing circumstances ; and ignorance 
of child-nature and insufficient education wrought their influence 
upon me. Soon after my birth my mother's health began to fail, 
and after nursing me nine months she died. This loss, a hard 
blow to me, influenced the whole environment and development 
of my being : I consider that my mother's death decided more or 
less the external circumstances of my whole life. 

The cure of five thousand souls, scattered over six or seven 
villages, devolved solely on my father. This work, even to a 
man so active as my father, who was very conscientious m the 
fulfilment of his duty as minister, was all-absorbing; the more 
so since the custom of frequent services still prevailed. Besides 
all this, my father had undertaken to superintend the building of 
a large new church, which drew him more and more from his 
home and from his children. 

I was left to the care of the servants ; but they, profiting by 
my father's absorption in his work, left me, fortunately for me, 
to my brothers, who were somewhat older than myself.f This, 



* Johann Jacob Froebel, father of Friedrich, belonged to the Old Lutheran 
Protestant Church. 

t Ihese were four (i) August, who went into business, and died yoang. 
(2) Christoph, a clergyman in Griesheim, who died in i8i3of the typhus, which 
then overspread all central Germany, having broken out in the over-crowded 
hospitals after the battle of Leipzig ; he was the father of Julhis, Karl, and 



Autobiography of FroebeL 



in addition to a circumstance of my later life, may have been the 
cause of that unswerving love for my family, and especially for 
my brothers, which has, to the present moment, been of the 
greatest importance to me in the conduct of my life. Although 
my father, for a village pastor, was unusually well informed — 
nay, even learned and experienced — and was an incessantly active 
man, yet in consequence of this separation from him during my 
earliest years I remained a stranger to him throughout my life ; 
and in this way I was as truly without a father as without a 
mother. Amidst such surroundings I reached my fourth year. 
My father then married again, and gave me a second mother. My 
soul must have felt deeply at this time the want of a mother's 
love, — of parental love, — for in this year occurs my first conscious- 
ness of self. I remember that I received my new mother over- 
flowing with feelings of simple and faithful child-love towards her. 
These sentiments made me happy, developed my nature, and 
strengthened me, because they were kindly received and recipro-^ 
cated by her. But this happiness did not endure. Soon my 
step-mother rejoiced in the possession of a son of her own ;* 
and then her love was not only withdrawn entirely from me and 
transferred to her own child, but I was treated with worse than 
indifference — by word and deed, I was made to feel an utter 
stranger. 

I am obliged here to mention these circumstances, and to 
describe them so particularly, because in them I see the first 
cause of my early habit of introspection, my tendency to self- 
examination, and my early separation from companionship with 
other men. Soon after the birth of her own son, when I had 



Theodor, the wish to benefit whom led their uncle Friedrich to begin his 
educational work in Griesheim in i8i6. {3) Christian Ludwig, first a manu- 
facturer in Osterode, and then associated with Friedrich from 1820 onwards, 
— born 24th June, 1770, died 9th January, 1851. (4) Traugott, who studied 
medicine at Jena, became a medical man, and was burgomaster of Stadt-Ilm. 
Friedrich August Wilhelm himself was born on the 21st April, 1782, and 
died on the 21st June, 1852. He had no sisters. 

* Karl Poppo Froebel, who became a teacher, and finally a publisher, — 
born 1786 ; died 25th March, 1824: not to be confounded with his nephew,. 
Karl, son of Christoph, now living in Edinburgh. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 



scarcely entered my boyhood, my step-mother ceased to use the 
sympathetic, heart-uniting " thou " in speaking to me, and began 
to address me in the third person, the most estranging of 
our forms of speech. And as in this mode of address the 
third person, " he," isolates the person addressed, it created 
a great chasm between my step-mother and me.* At the 
beginning of my boyhood, I already felt utterly lonely, and my 
soul was filled with grief. 

Some coarse-minded people wished to make use of my senti- 
ments and my mood at this time to set me against my step-mother, 
but my heart and mind turned with indignation from these 
persons, whom I thenceforth avoided, so far as I was able. Thus ^ 
I became, at an early age, conscious of a nobler, purer, inner-life, 
and laid the foundation of that proper self-consciousness and 
moral pride which have accompanied me through life. Tempta- 
tions returned from time to time, and each time took a more 
dangerous form : not only was I suspected as being capable of 
unworthy things, but base conduct was actually charged against 
me, and this in such a way as left no doubt of the impropriety 
of the suspicion and of the untruthfulness of the accusation. So 
it came to pass that in the first years of my boyhood I was 
perforce led to live to myself and in myself — and indeed to study 
my own being and inner consciousness, as opposed to external 

* This needs explanation. In Germany, even by strangers, children are 
universally addressed in the second person singular, which carries with it a 
certain caressing sentiment. Grown persons would be addressed (except by 
members of their own family, or intimate friends) in the third person plural. 
Thus, if one met a child in the street, one might say, Willst Du mit 7mr 
kommen ? (Wilt thou come with me ?) ; whereas to a grown person the proper 
form would be, Wollen Sie mit mir kommen ? (Will they — meaning, will you 
— come with me?). The mode of speech of which Froebel speaks here is now 
almost obsolete, and even in his day was only v.sed to a person of markedly 
inferior position. Our sentence would run in this case, Will Er mil mir 
kommen ? (Will he — meaning, will you, John or Thomas — come with me ?), 
and carries with it a sort of contemptuous superciliousness, as if the person 
spoken to were beneath the dignity of a direct address. It is evident, therefore, 
that to a sensitive, self-torturing child like Froebel, being addressed in this 
manner would cause the keenest pain ; since, as he justly says, it has the 
effect, by the mere form of speech, of isolating the person addressed. Such 
a one is not to be considered as of our family, or even of our rank in life. 



Autobiography of Frocbel. 



circumstances. My inward and my outward life were at that 
time, even during play and other occupations, my principal subjects 
for reflection and thought. 

A notable influence upon the development and formation of my 
character was also exercised by the position of my parents' house. 
It was closely surrounded by other buildings, walls, hedges, and 
fences, and was further enclosed by an outer courtyard, a pad- 
dock, and a kitchen garden. Beyond these latter I was strictly 
forbidden to pass. The dwelling had no other outlook than on 
to the buildings to right and left, the big church in front, and 
at the back the sloping fields stretching up a high hill. For a 
long time I remained thus deprived of any distant view : but 
above me I saw the sky, clear and bright as we so often find 
it in the hill country ; and around me I felt the pure fresh breeze 
stirring. The impression which that clear sky and that pure air 
then made on me has remained ever since present to my mind. 
My perceptions were in this manner limited to only the nearest 
objects. Nature, with the world of plants and flowers, so far 
as I was able to see and understand her, early became an object 
of observation and reflection to me. I soon helped my father 
in his favourite occupation of gardening, and in this waj^ received 
many permanent perceptions ; but the consciousness of the real 
life in nature only came to me further on, and I shall return to 
the point hereafter in the course of my narrative. Our domestic 
life at this time gave me much opportunity for occupation and 
reflection. Many alterations went on in our house ; both my 
parents were exceedingly active-minded, fond of order, and 
determined to improve their dwelling in every possible way. 
I had to help them according to my capacity, and soon perceived 
that I thereby gained strength and experience ; while through this 
growth of strength and experience my own games and occupations 
became of greater value to me. 

But from my life in the open air amongst the objects of nature, 
and from the externals of domestic life, I must now turn to the 
inner aspects of my home and family. 

My father -'as a theologian of the old school, who held know- 
ledge and science in less estimation than faith ; but yet he 
endeavoured to keep pace with the times. For this purpose he 



Autobiography of Froebel. 



subscribed to the best periodicals he could obtain, and carefully 
examined what information they offered him. This helped not 
a little to elevate and enlighten the old-fashioned truly Christian 
life which reigned in our family. Morning and evening all its 
members gathered together, and even on Sunday as well, although 
on that day divine service would of course also call upon us 
to assemble for common religious worship. Zollikofer, Hermes, 
Marezoll, Sturm, and others, turned our thoughts, in those 
delightful hours of heavenly meditation, upon our innermost 
being, and served to quicken, unfold, and raise up the life of the 
soul within us. Thus my life was early brought under the 
influence of nature, of useful handiwork, and of religious feelings ; 
or, as I prefer to say, the primitive and natural inclinations of 
every human being were even in my case also tenderly fostered 
in the germ. I must mention here, with reference to my ideas 
regarding the nature of man, to be treated of later, and as throw- 
ing light upon my professional and individual work, that at this 
time I used repeatedly, and with deep emotion, to resolve to try 
and be a good and brave man. As I have heard since, this firm 
inward resolution of mine was in flagrant contrast with my out- 
ward life. I was full of youthful energy and in high spirits, and 
did not always know how properly to moderate my vivacity. 
Through my want of restraint I got into all kinds of scrapes. 
Often, in my thoughtlessness, I would destroy the things I saw 
around me, in the endeavour to investigate and understand them. 

My father was prevented by his manifold occupations from 
himself instructing me. Besides, he lost all further inclination to 
teach me, after the great trouble he found in teaching me to read 
— an art which came to me with great difficulty. As soon as I 
could read, therefore, I was sent to the public village school. 

The position in which my father stood to the village school- 
masters, that is to say, to the Cantor,''' and to the master of the 
girls' school, and his judgment of the value of their respective 



* The Cantor would combine the duties of precentor (whence his title), 
leading the church singing and training the choristers, with those of the 
schoolmaster of the village boys' school. In large church -schools the 
Cantor is simply the choir-master. The great Bach was Cantor of the 
Thomas-Schule, Leipzig. 



8 Autobiography of FroebeL 

teaching, decided him to send me to the latter. This choice had 
a remarkable influence on the development of my inner nature, 
on account of the perfect neatness, quiet, intelligence, and order 
which reigned in the school ; nay, I may go further, and say the 
school was exactly suitable for such a child as I was. In proof 
of this I will describe my entrance into the school. At that time 
church and school generally stood in strict mutual relationship, 
and so it was in our case. The school children had their special 
places in church ; and not only were they obliged to attend 
church, but each child had to repeat to the teacher, at a special 
class held for the purpose every Monday, some passage of Scrip- 
ture used by the minister in his sermon of the day before, as a 
proof of attention to the service. From these passages that one 
which seemed most suitable to children was then chosen for the 
little ones to master or to learn by heart, and for that purpose 
one of the bigger children had during the whole week, at certain 
times each day, to repeat the passage to the little children, 
sentence by sentence. The little ones, all standing up, had then 
to repeat the text sentence by sentence in like manner, until it 
was thoroughly imprinted on their memories. 

I came into school on a Monday. The passage chosen for that 
week was, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God." I heard these 
words every day in the calm, serious, somewhat sing-song voices 
of the children, sometimes repeated by one child, sometimes by 
the whole number. And the text made an impression upon me 
such as none had ever done before and none ever did after. 
Indeed, this impression was so vigorous and permanent, that to 
this day every word spoken, with the special tone and expression 
then given to it, is still vivid in my mind. And yet that is now 
nearly forty years ago ! Perhaps even then the simple boy's 
heart felt that these words would be the foundation and the 
salvation of his life, bringing to him that conviction which was 
to become later on to the working and striving man a source 
of unconquerable courage, of unflinching, ever-ready, and cheerful 
self-sacrifiee. In short, my introduction into that school was my 
birth into the higher spiritual life. 

Here I break off' my narrative to ask myself whether I dare 
venture to pause yet a little longer over this first period of my 



Autobiography of Froebel. 



life. But this was the time when the buds began to unfold on 
my tree of life ; this was the time when my heart found its 
pivot-point, and when first my inner life awoke. If, then, 1 
succeed in giving an exact description of my early boyhood, I 
shall have provided an important aid to the right understanding 
of my life and work as a man. For that reason I venture to 
dwell at some inordinate length on this part of my life, and the 
more willingly since I can pass more quickly over later periods. 

It often suggests itself to me, while thus reviewing and describ- 
ing my life, just as it does with teaching and education — namely, 
that those things which are by most men thrown aside as common 
and unimportant are the very things which are, as I take it, of 
weightiest import. In my eyes, it is always a mistake to leave 
a gap in the rudimentary and fundamental part of a subject. 
Still I know one may exhaust the patience of a reader by 
touching on every minute detail, before he has been permitted 
to glance at the whole picture and to gather its scope and object. 
Therefore I beg your Highness * to pass over, at all events on 
the first reading, anything that may appear too long and too 
•detailed. 

Against standing rules, I was received in the girls' school, on 
account of the position of my father as pastor of the district. For 
the same reason I was placed, not with the pupils of my own age, 
but close to the teacher, which brought me among the elder girls. 
I joined in their lessons as far as I could. In two subjects I was 
quite able to do this. First, I could read the Bible with them ; 
and, secondly, I had to learn line by line, instead of the little 
texts of the younger children already spoken of, the hymns for 
the following Sunday's service. Of these, two especially light 
up the gloomy lowering dawn of my early boyhood, like two 
brilliant stars. They are— "Schwing dich auf, mein Herz und 
Geist," and " Es kostet viel ein Christ zu sein." t These hymns 
were hymns of life to me. 1 found my own little life expressed 



* It will be remembered that this letter is addressed to the Duke of 
-Meiningen. 

t " Arise, my heart and spirit," and "It costs one much (it is a difficult 
task) to be a Christian." 



lO Autobiography of Froehel. 



therein ; and they took such a hold upon me that often in later- 
years I have found strength and support in the message which 
they carried to my soul. My father's home life was in complete 
harmony with this discipline of the school. Although divine 
service was held twice on Sundays, I was but very seldom 
allowed to miss attending each service. I followed my father's 
sermons with great attention, partly because I thought I found in 
them many allusions to his own position, profession, and life- 
Looking back, I consider it of no slight importance that I used ta 
hear the service from the vestry, because I was there separated 
from the congregation, and could the better keep my attention 
from wandering. 

I have already mentioned that my father belonged to the old 
orthodox school of theology ; and in consequence the language 
both of his hymns and of his sermons was mystical and symbolic 
— a style of speech which, in more than one sense, I should call 
a stone-language, because it requires an overwhelming power to- 
burst its walls, and free from this outer shell the life contained 
within. But what the full strength of later life seems too weak 
to attain, is often accomplished by the living, life-awakening, 
and life-giving power of some simple, thoughtful young soul, by 
some young spirit first unfolding its wings, busily seekin'^- every- 
where for the causes and connections of all things, ii^ven for 
such a youth, the treasure is to be gained only after 1 )ng 
examination, inquiry, and reflection. If ever I found that for 
which I so longingly sought, then was I tilled with exceeding joy. 
The surroundings amidst which I had grown up, especially 
those in which my first childhood was passed, had caused my 
senses to be much and early exercised. The pleasures of the 
senses were from the first, therefore, an object for the closest con- 
sideration with me. The results of this analysing and questioning 
habit of my early boyhood were perfectly clear and decisive, and, 
if not rendered into words, were yet firmly settled in my m'nd. 
I recognised that the transitory pleasures of the senses were 
without enduring and satisfying influence on man, and that they 
were therefore on no account to be pursued with too great 
eagerness. This conviction stamped and determined my whole 
being, just as my questioning examination and comparison of the. 



Autobiography of Froebel, 1 1 



inner with the outer world, and my study of their inter-connection, 
is now the basis of my whole future hie. Unceasing self- 
contemplation, self-analysis, and self-education have been the 
fundamental characteristics of my life from the very first, and 
have remained so until these latest days. 

To stir up, to animate, to awaken, and to strengthen, the 
pleasure and power of the human being to labour uninter- 
ruptedly at his own education, has become and always re- 
mained the fundamental principle and aim of my educational 
work. ' 

Great was my joy when I believed I had proved completely to 
my own satisfaction that I was not destined to go to hell. The 
stony, oppressive dogmas of orthodox theology I very early 
explained away, perhaps assisted in this by two circumstances. 
Firstly, 1 heard these expressions used over and over again, from 
my habit of being present at the lessons given by my father in 
our own house, in preparation for confirmation. I heard them 
used also in all sorts of ways, so that my mind almost uncon- 
scously constructed some sort of explanation of them. Secondly, 
I was often a mute witness of the strict way in which my father 
performed his pastoral duties, and of the frequent scenes between 
him and the many people who came to the parsonage to seek 
advice and consolation. I was thus again constantly attracted 
from the outer to the inner aspects of life. Life, with its inmost 
motives laid bare, passed before my eyes, with my father's 
comments pronounced upon it; and thing and word, act and 
symbol were thus perceived by me in their most vivid relation- 
ship. 1 saw the disjointed, heavy-laden, torn, inharmonious life 
of man as it appeared in this community of five thousand souls, 
before ^he watchful eyes of its earnest, severe pastor. Matri- 
monial and sexual circumstances especially were often the objects 
of my father's gravest condemnation and rebuke. The way in 
whi h he spoke about these matters showed me that they formed 
one of the most oppressive and difficult parts of human conduct ; 
and, in my youth and innocence, I felt a deep pain and sorrow 
that man alone, among all creatures, should be doomed to these 
separations of sex, whereby the right path was made so difficult 
for him to find. I felt it a real necessity for the satisfaction of 



12 Autobiography oj Froebel. 

my heart and mind to reconcile this difficulty, and yet could find 
no way to do so. How could I at that age, and in my position ? 
But my eldest brother, who, like all my elder brothers, lived away 
from home, came to stay with us for a time ; and one day, when 
I expressed my delight at seeing the purple threads of the hazel 
buds, he made me aware of a similar sexual difference in plants. 
Now was my spirit at rest. I recognised that what had so 
weighed upon me was an institution spread over all nature, to 
which even the silent, beautiful race of flowers was submitted. 
From that time humanity and nature, the life of the soul and the 
life of the flower, were closely knit together in my mind ; and I 
can still see my hazel buds, like angels, opening for me the great 
God's temple of Nature. 

I now had what I needed : to the Church was added the 
Nature-Temple ; to the religious Christian life, the life of Nature ; 
to the passionate discord of human life the tranquil peace of the 
life of plants. From that time it was as if I held the clue of 
Ariadne to guide me through the labyrinth of life. An intimate 
communion with Nature for more than thirty years (although, 
indeed, often interrupted, sometimes for long intervals) has taught 
me that plants, especially trees, are a mirror, or rather a symbol, 
of human life in its highest spiritual relations ; and I think one 
of the grandest and deepest fore-feelings that have ever emanated 
from the human soul, is before us when we read, in the Holy 
Scriptures, of a tree of knowledge of good and evil. The whole 
of Nature teaches us to distinguish good from evil; even the 
world of crystals and stones — though not so vividly, calmly, 
clearly, and manifestly as the world of plants and flowers. I said 
my hazel buds gave me the clue of Ariadne. Many things grew 
clear to me : for instance, the earliest life and actions of our first 
parents in Paradise, and much connected therewith. 

There are yet three points touching my inner life up to my 
tenth year, which, before I resume the narrative of my outer life, 
I should like to mention here. 

The folly, superstition, and ignorance of men had dared to 
assume then, as they have done lately, that the world would 
soon come to an end. My mind, however, remained perfectly 
tranquil, because I reasoned thus with myself firmly and de- 



Autobiography of Froebel. 13. 

finitely : — Mankind will not pass from the world, nor will the 
world itself pass away, until the human race has attained to that 
degree of perfection of which it is capable on earth. The earth, 
Nature in its narrowest sense, will not pass away, moreover, 
until men have attained a perfect insight into its essence. This 
idea has returned to me during my life in many a varied guise, 
and I have often been indebted to its influence for peace, firmness, 
perseverance, and courage. 

Towards the end of this epoch, my eldest brother, already 
spoken of, was at the university, and studied theology.* Philoso- 
phic criticism was then beginning to elucidate certain Church 
dogmas. It was therefore not very surprising that father and 
son often differed in opinion. I remember that one day they had 
a violent dispute about religion and Church matters. My father 
stormed, and absolutely declined to yield ; my brother, though 
naturally of a mild disposition, flushed deep-red with excitement ; 
and he, too, could not abandon what he had recognised as true. 
I was present also on this as on many other occasions, an un- 
observed witness, and can still see father and son standing face to 
face in the conflict of opinion. I almost thought I understood 
something of the subject in dispute ; I felt as if I must side with 
my brother, but there seemed at the same time something in my 
father's view which indicated the possibility of a mutual under- 
standing. Already I felt in a dim way that every illusion has a 
true side, which often leads men to cling to it with a desperate 
firmness. This conviction has become more and more confirmed 
in me the longer I have lived; and when at any time I have 
heard two men disputing for the truth's sake, I have found that 
the truth is usually to be learnt from both sides. Therefore I 
have never liked to take sides ; a fortunate thing for me.t 

Another youthful experience which also had a decided influence 
in forming my cast of character, was the following : — There are 
certain oft-repeated demands made upon the members of our 

* Christoph Froebel is here meant. He studied at the University of 
Jena. 

t In this case Froebel's usually accurate judgment of his own character seems 
at fault ; his opinions being always most decided, even to the point of some- 
times rendering him incapable of fairly appreciating the views of others. 



14 Autobiography of Froebel, 

Established Church ; such as, to enter upon the service of Christ, 
to show forth Christ in one's life, to follow Jesus, etc. These 
injunctions were brought home to me times without number 
through the zeal of my father as a teacher of others and a liver 
himself of a Christian life. When demands are made on a child 
which are in harmony with child nature, he knows no reluctance 
in fulfilling them ; and as he receives them entirely and un- 
reservedly, so also he complies with them entirely and unre- 
servedly. That these demands were so often repeated convinced 
me of their intense importance ; but I felt at the same time the 
difficulty, or indeed, as it seemed to me, the impossibility of 
fulfilling them. The inherent contradiction which I seemed to 
perceive herein threw me into great depression ; but at last I 
arrived at the blessed conviction that human nature is such that 
it is not impossible for man to live the life of Jesus in its purity, 
and to show it forth to the world, if he will only take the right 
way towards it. 

This thought, which, as often as it comes into my mind, carries 
me back even now to the scenes and surroundings of my boy- 
hood, may have been not improbably amongst the last mental 
impressions of this period, and it may fitly close, therefore, the 
narrative of my mental development at this age. It became, 
later, the point whereon my whole life hinged. 

From what I have said of my boyish inner life, it might be 
assumed that my outer life was a happy and peaceful one. Such 
an assumption would, however, not be correct. It seems as if it 
had always been my fate to represent and combine the hardest 
and sharpest contrasts. My outer life was really in complete 
contrast with my inner. I had grown up without a mother ; vixy 
physical education had been neglected, and in consequence I had 
acquired many a bad habit. I always liked to be doing something 
or another, but in my clumsy way I made mistakes as to choice 
of materials, of time, and of place, and thus often incurred the 
severe displeasure of my parents. I felt this, being of a sensitive 
disposition, more keenly and more persistently than my parents ; 
the more so as I felt myself generally to blame in form rather 
than in substance, and in my inmost heart I could see there was 
a point of view from whence my conduct would seem, in substance 



Autobiography of Froebel. 15 

at all events, not altogether wrong, still less blameworthy. The 
motives assigned to my actions were not those which actuated 
me, so far as I could tell ; and the consciousness of being mis- 
judged made me really what I had been believed to be before, a 
thoroughly naughty boy. Out of fear of punishment I hid even 
the most harmless actions, and when I was questioned I made 
untruthful answers. 

In short, I was set down as wicked, and my father, who had 
not always time to investigate the justice of the accusations against 
me, remembered only the facts as they were represented to him. 
My neglected childhood called forth the ridicule of others ; when 
playing with my step-brother, I was always, according to my 
mother, the cause of anything that went wrong. As the mind of 
my parents turned more and more away from me, so on my side 
my life became more and more separated from theirs ; and I was 
abandoned to the society of people who, if my disposition had 
not been so thoroughly healthy, might have injured me even more 
than they did. I longed to escape from this unhappy state of 
things ; and I considered my elder brothers fortunate in being 
all of them away from home. Just at this melancholy time came 
home my eldest brother. He appeared to me as an angel of 
deliverance, for he recognised amidst my many faults my better 
nature, and protected me against ill-treatment. He went away 
again after a short stay ; but I felt that my soul was linked to his, 
thenceforth, down to its inmost depths ; and indeed, after his 
death, this love of mine for him turned the whole course of my 
life.* 

The boon was at last vouchsafed me, and that at my greatest 
need, to leave my father's house. Had it been otherwise, 
the flagrant contradiction between my outer and inner life must 
necessarily have developed the evil inclinations which had begun 
in earnest to fasten upon me. A new life entirely different from 
the former now opened before me. I was ten years and nine 
months old. But I pause yet anolher moment in the contempla- 

* Froebel is alluding to his undertakirg the education of his brother Chris- 
toph's sons, in November 1816, when he finaily decided to devote his life to the 
^au^e of education. 



1 6 Autobiography of Froebel. 

tion of this period before I pass to its narration. In order to be 
clearly understood by your serene Highness, which is very 
necessary to me if I am to attain my object, I will compare, with 
your permission, my former life with my present. I shall en- 
deavour to show how I trace the connection of my earlier and my 
later life ; how my earlier life has proved for me the means of 
understanding my later ; how, in general, my own individual life 
has become to me a key to the universal life, or, in short, to what 
I call the symbolic life and the perpetual, conditioned, and un- 
broken chain of existence. 

Since, throughout the period which I have just described, my 
inner self, my life and being, my desires and endeavours, were 
not discerned by my parents, so is it with me now with regard 
to certain German Governments.* And just as my outward life 
then was imperfect and incomplete, through which incomplete- 
ness my inner life was misunderstood, so also now the imper- 
fection and incompleteness of my establishment prevent people 
from discerning the true nature, the basis, the source, the aim and 
purpose, of my desires and endeavours, and from promoting them, 
after recognising their value, in a right princely and patriotic 
spirit. 

The misapprehension, the oppression under which I suffered 
in my early years, prepared me to bear similar evils later on, and 
especially those which weigh upon me in the present circum- 
stances of my life. And as I see my present private and public 
life and my destiny reflected in a part of my former life, just so 
do I read and trace the present universal life in my former indi- 
vidual life. Moreover, in the same way as I tried as child or boy 
to educate myself to be a worthy man according to those laws 
which God had implanted, unknown to me, within my nature, so 
now do I strive in the same way, according to the same laws, and 

* At the time Froebel was writing this autobiographical letter (1827), and 
seeking thereby to enlist the Duke of Meiningen's sympathies in his work, in 
order to found a fresh institution at Helba, he was undergoing what was almost 
a persecution at Keilhau. All associations of progressive men were frowned 
upon as politically dangerous, and Keilhau, amongst the rest, was held in sus- 
picion. Somewhat of this is seen in the interesting account by Barop further 
on (" Critical Moments at Keilhau "). 



Autobiography of Froebel. ly 



by the same method, to educate the children of my country. 
That for which I strove as a boy, not yet conscious of any purpose^ 
the human race now strives for with equal unconsciousness of 
purpose, but for all that none the less truly. The race is, how- 
ever, surrounded by less favourable circumstances than those 
which influenced me in my boyhood. 

Life in its great as well as in its small aspects, in humanity 
and the human race as well as in the individual (even though the 
individual man often wilfully mars his own existence) — life, in 
the present, the past, and the future, has always appeared to me 
as a great undivided whole, in which one thing is explained, is 
justified, is conditioned and urged forward by the other. 

In order that, if it be possible, there should remain no obscurity 
whatever in my actions, thoughts, and life, I shall proceed to 
consider them all, down to the very latest event which has hap- 
pened to me : that is, the writing-down of this statement of my 
life for your Highness. My life experience it is which urges me 
to do this ; not any whim or caprice. Common worldly wisdom 
would challenge such a step if it were known ; no one would de- 
sire to take it, no one would dare to take it. I dare it, and I do 
it, because my childhood has taught me that where for trust we 
find distrust, where for union we find division, where for belief 
we find doubt, there but sad fruit will come to the harvest, and a 
burdensome and narrow life alone can follow. 

I return again to the narrative of the development of my inner 
and outer life. 

A new existence now began for me, entirely opposed to that 
which I had hitherto led. An uncle on my mother's side came to 
visit us in this year ; he was a gentle, afiectionate man.* His 
appearance among us made a most agreeable impression upon 
me. This uncle, being a man of experience, may have noticed 
the adverse influences which surrounded me ; for soon after his 
departure he begged my father by letter to turn me over to him 
entirely. My father readily consented, and towards the end of 



* Herr Hoffmann, a clergyman, representing the State in Church matter 
for the district of Stadt-Ilm ; a post somewhat analogous to that of our arch- 
deacon. 



1 8 Autobiography of FroebeL 



the year 1792 I went to him. He had early lost both wife and 
child, and only his aged mother-in-law lived in his house with 
him. In my father's house severity reigned supreme ; here, on 
the contrary, mildness and kindness held sway. There I en- 
countered mistrust ; here I was trusted. There I was under 
restraint; here I had liberty. Hitherto I had hardly ever been 
with boys of my own age ; here I found forty schoolfellows, for I 
joined the upper class of the town school.* 

The little town of Stadt-Ilm is situated in a somewhat wide 
valley, and on the banks of a small limpid stream.t My uncle's 
house had gardens attached, into which I could go if I liked; 
but I was also at liberty to roam all over the neighbourhood, if 
only I obeyed the strict rule of the house to return punctually 
at the time appointed. Here I drank in fresh life-energy in long 
draughts ; for now the whole place was my playground, whereas 
formerly, at home, I had been limited to our own walls. I gained 
freedom of soul and strength of body. 

The clergyman who taught us never interfered with our games, 
played at certain appointed playgrounds, and always with great 
fun and spirit. Deeply humiliating to me were the frequent 
slights I received in our play, arising from my being behind boys 
-of my age in bodily strength, and more especially in agility ; and 
all my dash and daring could not replace the robust, steady 
strength, and the confident sureness of aim which my companions 
possessed. Happy fellows ! they had grown up in continual 
exercise of their youthful boyish strength. I felt myself exceed- 
ingly fortunate when I had at length got so far that my school- 
fellows could tolerate me as a companion in their games. 
But whatever I accomplished in this respect by practice, 
hy continual effort of will, and by the natural course of 
life, I always felt myself physically deficient in contrast with 
their uncramped boyish powers. Setting aside that which 
I had been robbed of by my previous education, my new 



* Equal to an English middle-class school. 

t The Ilm, flowing through Thuringia into the Saale, a tributary of the 
EllDe. Oberweissbach is upon the Schwarza, also flovwng into the Saale. 
Weimar stands upon the Ilm, Jena upon the Saale. 



Autobiography oj Froebel, 19 

life was vigorous and unfettered by external restraint; and 
they tell me I made good use of my opportunity. The world 
lay open before me, as far as I could grasp it. It may indeed 
be because my present life was as free and unconstrained as my 
former life had been cramped and constrained, an3'how the com- 
panions of my youth have reminded me of several incidents of 
that time which make me think that my good spirits led me to 
the borders of wildness and extravagance ; although as a boy I con- 
sidered my demeanour quieter by far than that of my companions 
of my own age. My communion with Nature, silent hitherto, 
now became freer and more animated. And as, at the same 
time, my uncle's house was full of peace and quiet contemplation, 
I was able as I grew up to develop that side of my character also ; 
thus on every side my life became harmoniously balanced. 

In two places, alike centres of education, I found myself as 
before quite at home, even though I was more frequently than 
ever the victim of absence of mind — I mean the church and the 
school. In the latter I especially enjoyed the hours devoted to 
religious instruction. As with my uncle himself, and with his 
life, so was it also with his sermons ; they were gentle, mild, 
and full of lovingkindness. I could follow them quite readily, 
and in the Monday repetition at school I was able to give a good 
account of them. But the religious instruction of our own school- 
teacher responded best to my needs ; all that I had worked out 
for myself was placed by him in a fuller light, and received from 
him a higher confirmation. Later in life, when I had grown to 
manhood, I spoke with my uncle on the excellence of this teach- 
ing, and he made reply that it was indeed very good, but was 
too philosophical and abstruse for those to whom it was 
addressed ; " for thee," continued he, " it may have been well 
suited, since thou hadst already received such unusually good 
instruction from thy father." Let that be as it may, this teaching 
enlightened, animated, and warmed me, — nay, glowed within me 
till my heart was completely melted, especially when it touched 
upon the life, the work, and the character of Jesus. At this I 
would burst into tears, and the longings to lead in future a 
similar life took definite form, and wholly filled my soul. When 
I now bear tales of the ebullitions oi my youthful spirit occurring 



20 Autobiography of Froebel. 



in that period of my life, I cannot help thinking that they must 
have led superficial observers to the erroneous opinion that the 
monitions and teachings of religion swept over my spirit without 
leaving a trace of their passage. And yet how wrongly would 
such observers have judged the true state of my inner life ! 

The subjects best taught in the school of Stadt-Ilm were 
reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Latin was miserably 
taught, and still worse learnt. Here, as in so many similar 
schools, the teaching utterly lacked the elucidation of first prin- 
ciples. The time spent on Latin was therefore not wasted upon 
me, in so far that I learnt from it that such a method of teaching 
could bear no fruit among the scholars. Arithmetic was a very 
favourite study of mine ; and as I also received private tuition in 
this subject, my progress was so rapid that I came to equal my 
teacher both in theory and practice, although his attainments 
were by no means despicable. But how astonished was I when,. 
in my twenty-third year, I first went to Yverdon, and found 
I could not solve the questions there being set to the scholars ! 
This was one of the experiences which prepossessed me so 
keenly in favour of Pestalozzi's method of teaching, and decided 
me to begin arithmetic myself from the very beginning over again, 
according to his system. But more of this later. 

In physical geography we repeated our tasks parrot-wise, 
speaking much and knowing nothing; for the teaching on this 
subject had not the very least connection with real life, nor had 
it any actuality for us, although at the same time we could rightly 
name our little specks and patches of colour on the map. I 
received private tuition in this subject also. My teacher wished 
to advance further with me; he took me to England. I could 
find no connection between that country and the place and 
country in which I dwelt myself, so that of this instruction also I 
retained but little. As for actual instruction in German, it was 
not to be thought of; but we received directions in letter- writing 
and in spelling. I do not -know with what study the teaching of 
spelling was connected, but I think it was not connected with any ; 
it hovered in the air. I had lessons, furthermore, in singing 
and in pianoforte playing, but without result. I merely mention 
all this now, in order to be able to refer to it later on. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 2 1 

My life the whole time of my stay with my uncle had three 
aspects : the religious life developing and building up my moral 
being; the external life made up of boyish play, into which I 
threw my whole energy ; and the life of thought quietly showing 
itself within my uncle's peaceful home. To this last influence also 
I yielded myself with equal earnestness, and felt no suspicion of 
the apparent contradiction which my outward life exhibited to 
such a mood. Like my school-fellows, I lived without control ; 
as far as I saw or felt, I was untrammelled ; and yet I do not call 
to mind that any of us ever committed a seriously culpable 
action. 

Here I am obliged to mention something which as an educa- 
tionist I can by no means pass lightly by. We received instruc- 
tion from two schoolmasters : one was pedantic and rigid ; the 
other, more especially our class-teacher (conrector), was large- 
hearted and free. The first never had any influence over his 
class ; the second could do whatever he pleased with us, and if 
he had but set his mind to it, or perhaps if he had been aware of 
his power, he might have done some thoroughly good sound 
work with his class. In the little town of Stadt-Ilm were two 
ministers, both ephors ""'' of the school. My uncle, the principal 
minister, was mild, gentle, and kind-hearted, impressive in daily 
life as in his sacred office or in the pulpit ; the other minister 
was rigid even to sternness, frequently scolding and ordering us 
about. The first led us with a glance. A word from him, and 
surely few were so brutish as to refuse that word admittance to 
their heart. The long exhortations of the other went, for the 
most part, over our heads, leaving no trace behind. Like my 
father, my uncle was a true shepherd of his flock ; but a gentle 
lovingkindness to all mankind reigned in him. My father was 
moved by the conviction of the rectitude of his actions ; he was 
earnest and severe. Both have been dead over twenty years ; 
but how different is the spirit they have left behind amongst their 
congregations. Here, they are glad at being released from sp 
strict a control, and, if I am rightly informed, unbridled license 

* Superintendents, The ephors of ancient Sparta amongst their duties had 
that of the superintendence of education, whence the German title. 



22 Antobtography of Frochel. 



has sprung up amongst them ; there, the Httle town raises 
itself to higher and ever higher prosperity, and all things are 
made to serve towards mental culture, as well as towards a rignt 
citizen-like business activity. I permit myself this digression, 
because these results were paralleled as a life-experience in my 
own life. 

"' In this manner I lived, up to my confirmation ; all but a few 
weeks, that is, which I spent at my parents' house during the 
long holidays. Here, too, everything seemed to take a gentler 
turn, and the domestic, thrifty activity which filled the place,, 
and always struck me anew in my periodical visits home, 
wrought upon me with most beneficial efi'ect. The copper-plate 
engravings in my father's library were the first things I sought 
out, especially those representing scenes in the history of the 
world. A table showing our (German) alphabet in its relations 
with many others made a surprising impression upon me. It 
enabled me to recognise the connection and the derivation of our 
letters from the old Phoenician characters. This gave me a dim 
conception of the inner connection of all those languages of 
which, as my brother had studied and was still studying them, 
I often heard, and saw in print. Especially the Greek language 
lost much of its strangeness in my eyes, now that I could 
recognise its characters in the German alphabet. All this, how- 
ever, had no immediate consequence in my life; these things, as 
echoes from my youth, produced their effect upon me at a later 
time. 

At this time, too, 1 read all sorts of boys' books. The story 
of Samuel Lawill impressed me most vividly ; I, too, longed for 
such a ring, which by its warning pressure on my finger could 
hinder my hand from effecting unworthy purposes, and I was 
very angry with the youthful owner of the ring in the story, 
who threw it away in irritation because it pressed him right 
hard at a moment when he wished to commit a passionate 
deed.* 

My confirmation, and the preparation for it, all conducted by 

* This story is not now popular, but its nature is sufficiently indicated in tlLe- 
text 



Autobiography of Froebel. 23 



my uncle, was over. I had received from it the most impressive 
and the most far-reaching influence in my whole life, and all my 
life-threads found in it their point of union and repose. I had 
now to be prepared for some business calling, and the question 
was raised, for which ? That I should not study at the university 
had already been decided long before by the express determina- 
tion of my step-mother. For since two of my brothers * had 
devoted themselves to study, she feared that the further addi- 
tional expense would be too heavy a burden upon my father's 
means. It may be that this intention had already influenced and 
limited my whole course of instruction ; and probably only the 
little narrow circle of future business aims had been considered ; 
the eye had not looked upon the boy as a future man. Possibly 
from this cause I was kept so little to Latin ; it was enough if I 
learnt, as our mode of expression ran, to " state a Casus " (that 
is, to decline a noun). From my own experience it was thus 
shown to me how eminently injurious it is in education and in 
instruction to consider only a certain circle of future activities or 
a certain rank in life. The wearisome old-fashioned education 
ad hoc (that is, for some one special purpose) has always left 
many a noble power of man's nature unawakened. 

A career in our country frequently chosen by the worthiest 
and most anxious parents for their sons is that of a post in the 
Treasury and Exchequer. Aspirants to such a post have two 
means of entering and two starting-points in this career ; either 
they become a clerk to one of the minor officials in the Treasury 
or Exchequer, or the personal servant of one of the highest 
officials. As my knowledge of writing and figures seemed to my 
father satisfactory and sufficient for such a post, and as he knew 
well that it might lead, not merely to a life free from pecuniary 
cares, but even to wealth and fortune, he chose this career as 
mine. But the minor Treasury official who might have found 
employment for such a young man, showed various reasons why 
he could not or would not as yet receive me as a clerk. There 
was something in my nature which revolted against the second 
mode I have mentioned of entering this career ; something which 
I never afterwards experienced, but which at the time absolutely 

* Christoph and Traugott. 



24 Autobiography of Froehel. 



prevented me from choosing such a mode of starting in my future 
profession, and that in spite of the most alluring hopes that were 
held out to me. My lather meant well and honestly by me, but 
fate ruled it against him. Strangely enough, it happened that in 
my later capacity of schoolmaster, I became the educator and 
teacher of two of the nephews of that very man into whose 
service my father had meant to have sent me ; and I hope to God 
that I have been of greater service to that family by filling the 
heart and brain of these young people with good and useful 
notions than if I had brushed the clothes and shoes of their 
uncle, and spread his table with savoury dishes. In the latter 
case, very likely an externally easy and happy existence might 
have been mine, whereas now I wage a constant fight with 
cares and difficulties. 

Suffice it to say, this career was closed to me ; a second was 
proposed by my mother, but from this my father delivered me by 
expressing a decided disapproval. 

My own desires and inclinations were now at last consulted. 
I wanted to be an agriculturist in the full meaning of the word ; 
for I loved mountain, field, and forest ; and I heard also that to 
learn anything solid in this occupation one must be well acquainted 
with geometry and land-surveying. From what I had learnt of 
the latter by snatches now and then, the prospect of knowing 
more about it delighted me much ; and I cared not whether I 
began with forestry, with farming, or with geometry and land- 
surveying. My father tried to find a position for me; but the 
farmers asked too high a premium. Just at this time he became 
acquainted with a forester who had also a considerable reputation 
as land-surveyor and valuer. They soon came to terms, and I 
was apprenticed to this man for two years, to learn forestry, 
valuing, geometry, and land-surve3''ing. I was fifteen years and 
a half old when I became an apprentice to the forester, on Mid- 
summer Day 1797. 

It was two days' journey from my home to the forester's, for 
his district was not in our country. The man often gave me 
proofs of his thorough and many-sided knowledge ; but he did 
not understand the art of conveying his knowledge to others, 
especially because what he knew he had acquired only by dint of 



Autobiography of Froebel. 25 

actual experience.* Further, some work of timber-floating f with 
which he had been entrusted hindered him from devoting to me 
the stipulated time necessary for my instruction. 

As soon as I saw this quite clearly, my own activity of mind 
urged me to make use of the really excellent books on forestry 
and geometry which I found lying to my hand. I also made 
acquaintance with the doctor of a little town near by, who studied 
natural science for his amusement ; and this friend lent me books 
on botany, through which I learnt also about other j>lants than 
just those of the forest. A great deal of my time during the 
absence of the forester (when I was left quite to myself) I 
devoted to making a sort of map of the neighbourhood I lived 
in ; but botany was my special occupation. My life as forester's 
apprentice was a four-fold one : firstly, there was the homelier 
and more practical side of life ; then the life spent with Nature, 
especially forest-nature ; then also a life of the study, devoted to 
work at mathematics and languages ; and lastly, the time spent 
in gaining a knowledge of plants. My chosen profession and the 
other circumstances of my position might have brought me into 
contact with many kinds of men ; but nevertheless my life 
remained retired and solitary. My religious church life now 
changed to a religious communion with Nature, and in the last 
half-year I lived entirely amongst and with my plants, which 
drew me towards them with fascination, notwithstanding that as 
yet I had no sense of the inner life of the plant world. Collecting 
and drying specimens of plants was a work I prosecuted with the 
greatest care. Altogether this time of my life was devoted in 
many various ways to self-education, self-instruction, and moral 
advancement. Especially did I love to indulge my old habit of 
self-observation and introspection, 

* In Germany a Forstmann, or forester, if he has studied forest cultivation 
in a School of Forestry, rises eventually to the position of supervisor of 
forests {Forst-meiiter). The forester who does not study remains in the inferior 
position. 

t In the Gennan State forests, the timber, when cut down, is frequently not 
transported by road, but is made to slide down the mountain-sides by timber- 
shoots into the streams or rivers ; it is then made up into rafts, and so floated 
-down to its destination. 



26 Autobiography of Froebel. 

I must mention yet another event of the greatest importance 
from the point of view of my inner life. An hour's walk from 
where I then lived was a small country town. A company of 
strolling actors arrived there, and played in the prince's castle 
in the town. After I had seen one of their performances, hardly 
any of those which followed passed without my attendance. 
These performances made a deep and lively impression upon me,, 
and this the more that I felt as if my soul at last received nourish- 
ment for which it had long hungered. The impressions thus 
gained lasted so much the longer, and had so much the greater 
influence on my self-culture, in that after each performance my 
hour's walk home by dark or in the starlight allowed me to 
recapitulate what I had heard, and so to digest the meaning of the 
play. I remember especially how deeply a performance of 
Iffland's Huntsmen moved me, and how it inspired me with 
firm moral resolutions, which I imprinted deep in my mind under 
the light of the stars. My interest in the play made me seek 
acquaintance with the actors, and especially with one of them, an 
earnest young man who attracted my attention, and to whom I 
spoke about his profession. I congratulated him on being a mem- 
ber of such a company, able to call up such ennobling sentiments 
in the human soul ; perhaps even expressed a wish that I could 
become a member of such a company. Then the honest fellow 
described the profession of an actor as a brilliant, deceitful 
misery, and confessed to me that he had been only forced by 
necessity to adopt this profession, and that he was soon about 
to abandon it. Once again I learned by this to divide cause from 
effect, internal from external things. My visits to the play 
brought upon me a most unpleasant experience, for my father, 
when I spoke to him without concealment of my playgoing, 
reproached me very bitterly for it. He looked upon my conduct 
as deserving the highest punishment, which was in absolute 
contradiction with my own view^ ; for I placed the benefit I had 
derived from my attendance at the play side by side with what 
I had received by my attendance at church, and expressed some- 
thing of the kind to my father. As often happened in later life, 
so also on this occasion it was my eldest brother who was the 
mediator between my father and myself.. 



Autobiography oj Froebel. 27 

On Midsummer Day 1799 my apprenticeship came to an end. 
The forester, who could now have made my practical knowledge 
of service to himself, wished to keep me another year. But I had 
by this time acquired higher views ; I wished to study mathe- 
matics and botany more thoroughly, and I was not to be kept 
back from my purpose. When my apprenticeship was over I 
left him, and returned to my father's house. 

My master knew well that he had not done his duty towards 
me, and with this probably humiliating consciousness before him, 
and in spite of the thoroughly satisfactory testimonial that he 
gave me, he committed a very mean action against me. He did 
not know anything about my private study ; for instance, my com- 
pletely working through some elementary mathematical books, 
which I had found myself quite well able to understand. Besides, 
he was dissatisfied that I would not stay another year with him. 
He therefore sent a letter to my father, in which he complained 
bitterly of my conduct, and shifted the blame of my ignorance 
of my calling entirely on to my shoulders. This letter actually 
arrived at home before I did ; and my father sent it on to my 
eldest brother, who was minister in a village through which I had 
to pass on my way home. Soon after I reached my brother's 
house he communicated to me the contents of this inculpatory 
letter. I cleared myself by exposing the unconscientious behaviour 
of my master, and by showing my private work. I then wrote 
a reply to my master, clearly refuting all his accusations, and 
exhibiting on the other hand his behaviour towards me ; and 
with this I satisfied my father and my brother. But the latter 
reproached me for having suffered wrongdoing so long without 
complaint. To that I gave the simple answer, that my father, at 
the beginning of my apprenticeship, had told me not to come 
to him with any complaint, as I should never be listened to, but 
should be considered as wrong beforehand. My brother, who 
knew my father's severity and his views on such points, was 
silent. But my mother saw in one declaration of the forester the 
confirmation of her own opinion about me. The forester declared, 
that if ever anything was made of me, the same good fortune 
might be told of the first-comer without further trouble, and my 
mother assented heartily to his opinion. 



2S Autobiography of Froebel. 



Thus disappeared once more the light, the sunshine, which had 
gladdened me with its warmth, especially in the more recent part 
of my life. The wings of my mind, which had begun to flutter of 
themselves, were again bound, and my life once more appeared 
all cold and harsh before me. Then it happened that my father 
had to send some money to my brother (Traugott), who was 
studying medicine in Jena. The matter pressed ; so, as I had 
nothing to do, it was decided that I should be the messenger. 

When I reached Jena I was seized by the stirring intellectual 
life of the place, and I longed to remain there a little time. Eight 
weeks of the summer half-year's session of 1799 yet remained. 
My brother wrote to my father that I could fill that time usefully 
and profitably in Jena, and in consequence of this letter I was 
permitted to stay. I took lessons in map and plan-drawing, and 
I devoted all the time I had to the work. At Michaelmas I went 
home with my brother, and my step-mother observed that I 
could now fairly say I had passed through the university. But 
I thought differently ; my intelligence and my soul had been 
stimulated in many ways, and I expressed my wish to my father 
to be allowed to study finance there, thus returning to my previous 
career. My father was wiUing to give his permission if I could 
tell him how to find the means. I possessed a very small property 
inherited from my mother, but I thought it would be insufficient. 
However, after having conferred with my brother, I talked it over 
with my father. I was still a minor, and therefore had to ask 
the consent of my trustee to realise my property ; but as soon as 
I had obtained this I went as a student to Jena, in 1799. I was 
then seventeen years and a half old. 

A testimonial from my father attesting my capacity for the 
curriculum procured me matriculation without difficulty. My 
matriculation certificate called me a student of philosophy, which 
seemed very strange, because I had set before me as the object 
of my studies practical knowledge; and as to' philosophy, of 
which I had so often heard, I had formed a very high idea of it. 
The word made a great impression upon my dreamy, easily- 
excited, and receptive nature. Although the impression dis- 
appeared almost as soon as conceived, it gave, however, higher 
and unexpected relations to my studies. 

) 



Autobiography of Froebel. 29 



The lectures I heard were only those which promised to be 
useful in the career I had now again embraced. I heard lectures 
on applied mathematics, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mineralogy, 
botany, natural history, physics, chemistry, accounts, cultivation 
of forest trees and management of forests, architecture, house- 
building, and land-surveying. I continued topographical drawing. 
I heard nothing purely theoretical except mathematics ; and 
of philosophical teaching and thought I learnt only so much as the 
intercourse of university life brought with it ; but it was precisely 
through this intercourse that I received in various ways a many- 
sided intellectual impulse. I usually grasped what had been 
taught ; the more thoroughly since, through my previous life, I 
had become well acquainted with the principal subjects, and 
already knew their relation to practical work. 

Some of the lectures were almost easy for me — for instance, 
those on mathematics. I have always been able to perceive with 
ease and pleasure relations of geometrical figures and of planes ; 
so that it seemed inexplicable to me that every farmer should 
not be equally capable of understanding them. This I had said 
before to my brother, who tried to give me an explanation ; but 
I did not yet grasp it. I had expected I don't know exactly what, 
but certainly something higher, something grandiose ; very likely 
I had expected something with more life in it. The mathematical 
course, therefore, at first seemed to me unimportant ; but later on 
I found that I, also, could not follow every detail. However, I 
did not think much of this, because I readily understood the 
general meaning, and I said to myself that particular cases would 
not cause me any mental fatigue if I found it necessary to learn 
them. 

The lectures of my excellent teacher were not so useful to me 
as they might have been, if I could have seen in the course of 
instruction and in its progress somewhat more of necessary con- 
nection and less of arbitrary arrangement. This want of necessary 
connection was the reason of the immediate dislike I always took 
to every course of instruction. I felt it even in pure mathem.atics, 
still more was it the case in applied mathematics, and most of all 
in experimental physics. Here it seemed to me as if everything 
were arranged m aroitrary series, so that from the very first 



30 Autobiography of Free be I. 

I found this study a fatigue. The experiments failed to arrest 
my attention. I desired and sought after some inner connection 
between the phenomena, deduced from and explained by some 
simple root principles. But that was the very point withheld 
from me. Mathematical demonstrations came like halting 
messengers ; they only became clear to the mind's eye wh^n the 
truth to be demonstrated lay before me already in all its* living 
strength. On the other hand, my attention was riveted by the 
study of gravitation, of force, of weight, which were {living 
things to me, because of their evident relation to actual facts. 

In mechanics (natural philosophy) I could not understand why 
so many of the so-called " mechanical powers " were assumed, 
and why several of them were not reduced to cases of the inclined 
plane. 

In mineralogy my previous education had left many gaps 
unfilled, especially as regards the powers of observation. I was 
fond of mineral specimens, and gave myself much trouble to com- 
prehend their several properties ; but in consequence of my 
defective preparation I found insuperable difficulties in my way, 
and perceived thereby that neglect is neither quickly nor lightly 
to be repaired. The most assiduous practice in observation failed 
to make my sight so quick and so accurate as it ought to have 
been for my purpose. At that time I failed to apprehend the fact 
of my deficient quickness of sight ; it ought to have taught me 
much, but I was not prepared to learn the lesson. 

Chemistry fascinated me. The excellent teacher (Gottling) 
always demonstrated the true connection of the phenomena under 
consideration ; and the theory of chemical affinity took strong hold 
upon me. 

Note-taking at these lectures w^as a thing I never thought of 
doing ; for that which I understood forthwith became a part 
of me, and that which I failed to understand seemed to me not 
worth writing down. I have often felt sorry for it since. But 
as regards this point, I have always had through my whole life 
the perfectly clear conviction that when I had mastered a whole 
subject in its intimate relations I could go back upon, and then 
understand, details which at the time of hearing had been unin- 
telligible to me. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 31 

In botany I had a clear-sighted, kind-hearted teacher (Batsch). 
His natural system of botany"^' gave me great satisfaction, although 
I had always a painful perception of how much still remained for 
him to classify. However, my view of Nature as one whole 
became by his means substantially clearer, and my love for the 
observation of Nature in detail became more animated. I shall 
always think of him with gratitude. He was also my teacher in 
natural history. Two principles that he enunciated seized upon 
me with special force, and seemed to me valid. The first was 
the conception of the mutual relationship of all animals, extending 
like a network in all directions ; and the second was that the 
skeleton or bony framework of fishes, birds, and men was one 
and the same in plan, and that the skeleton of man should be 
considered as the fundamental type which Nature strove to pro- 
duce even in the lower forms of creation. t I was always highly 
delighted with his expositions, for they suggested ideas to me 
which bore fruit both in my intelligence and in my emotional 
nature. Invariably, whenever I grasped the inter-connection and 
unity of phenomena, I felt the longings of my spirit and of my 
soul were fulfilled. 

I easily understood the other courses I attended, and was able 
to take a com.prehensive glance over the subjects of which they 
treated. I had seen building going on, and had myself assisted 
in building, in planting, etc. ; here, therefore, I could take notes, 
and write complete and satisfactory memoranda of the lectures. 

My stay in Jena had taught me much ; by no means so much 
as it ought to have taught me, but yet I had won for myself 



* Jussieu's natural system of botany may possibly be here alluded to. The 
celebrated " Genera Plantarum" appeared in 1798, and Froebel was at Jena 
in 1799. On the other hand, A. J, G. Batsch, Froebel's teacher, professor 
at the university since 1789, had published in 1787-8 his " Anleitung zur 
Kentniss und Geschichte der Pflanzen," 2 vols. "We have not seen this work. 
Batsch also published an "Introduction to the Study of Natural History," 
which reached a second edition in 1805. 

t In justice to Froebel and his teacher, it must be remembered that the 
tneory of evolution was not as yet formed, and that those who dimly sought 
after some explanation of the uniformity of the vertebrate plan, which they 
observed, were but all too likely to be led astray. 



32 Autobiography of Froebel. 

a standpoint, both subjective and objective. I could already 
perceive unity in diversity, the correlation of forces, the inter- 
connection of all living things, life in matter, and the principles 
of physics and biology. 

One thing more I have to bring forward from this period. Up 
till now my life had met with no sympathetic recognition other 
than the esteem which I had enjoyed of the country physician 
during my apprenticeship — he who encouraged me to study 
natural science, and smoothed away for me many a difficulty. 
But now such sympathy was destined to offer itself as a means of 
education and improvement. For there were in Jena just then 
two scientific associations, one for natural history and botany, the 
other for mineralogy, as it was then called. Many of the young 
students, who had shown living interest and done active work 
in natural science, were invited to become members by the 
President, and this elevating pleasure was also offered to me. At 
the moment I certainly possessed few qualifications for member- 
ship ; the most I could say was that my faculty for arranging 
and classifying might be made of some use in the Natural History 
Society, and this, indeed, actually came to pass. Although my 
admission to this society had no great effect upon my later life, 
because it was dissolved at the death of its founder, and I did not 
keep up my acquaintance with the other members afterwards, 
yet it awakened that yearning towards higher scientific knowledge 
which now began to make itself forcibly felt within me. 

During my residence at the university I lived in a very retired 
and economical way; my imperfect education, my disposition, 
and the state of my purse alike contributing to this. I seldom 
appeared at places of public resort, and in my reserved way I 
made my brother (Traugott) my only companion ; he was studying 
medicine in Jena during the first year of my residence there.* 

* The text (Lange, Berlin, 1862) says meinen dltesten Bruder, that is, "of 
my eldest brother ; " but this is quite an error, whether of Froebel or of Herr 
Lange we cannot at present say. As we have already said in a footnote on 
p. 3, August was the eldest brother of Friedrich, and Christoph was the eldest 
then living. Traugott, who was at Jena with Friedrich, was his next older 
brother, youngest of the first family, except only Friedrich himself. It is 
Traugott who is meant in this passage. 



Autobiography of Froebel. x\ 

The theatre alone, of which I was still passionately fond, I visited 
now and then. In the second year of this first studentship, in 
spite of my quiet life, I found myself in an awkward position. It 
began, indeed, with my entrance into the university, but did not 
come to a head till my third half-year. When I went to the 
university, my father gave me a bank draft for a small amount 
to cover my expenses, not only for the first half-year, but for the 
entire residence, I think. My brother, who, as I said, was with 
me at Jena for the first year, wished me to lend him part of my 
allowance, all of which I did not then require, whereas he was for 
the moment in difficulties. He hoped soon to be able to repay 
me the money. I gladly gave him the .greater part of my little 
draft ; but unfortunately I could not get the money back, and 
therefore found myself in greater and greater difficulties. My 
position became terribly urgent ; my small allowance had come 
to an end by the close of the first year, but I could not bring 
myself to leave the university, especially now that a yearning for 
scientific knowledge had seized me, and I hoped for great things 
from my studies. Besides, I thought that my father might be 
induced to support me at the university another half-year. 

My father would hear nothing of this so far as he was con- 
cerned ; and my trustee would not agree to the conditions offered 
by my father (to cover an advance) ; so I had to pay the penalty 
of their obstinacy. 

Towards the end of my third half-year the urgency of vs\y 
difficulties increased. I owed the keeper of an eating-house (for 
meals) thirty thalers, if I am not mistaken. As this man had 
caused me to be summoned for payment several times before the 
Senate of the University, and I had never been able to pay, and 
as he had even addressed my father, only to "receive from him 
a sharp refusal to entertain the matter, I was threatened with 
imprisonment in the case of longer default of payment. And 
I actually had to submit to this punishment. My step-mother 
inflamed the displeasure of my father, and rejoiced at his inflexi- 
bility. My trustee, w^ho still had the disposal of some property 
of mine, could have helped me, but did not, because the letter 
of the law was against any interference from his side. Each one 
hoped by the continuance of my sorry plight to break the stub- 



34 Autobiography of Froehel. 

bornness of the other. I served as scapegoat to the eaprices* 
of the obstinate couple, and languished as such nine weeks long 
in the university prison at Jena.''' At last my father conse-nrted to^ 
advance me money on my formally abandoning, before the 
university board, all claim on his property in the shape of inherit- 
ance ; and so, in the end, I got free. 

In spite of the gloom into which my position as a prisonier 
plunged me, the time of my arrest was not utterly barren. My 
late endeavours towards scientific knowledge had made me more 
and more conscious of my need of a solid foundation in my know- 
ledge of Latin ; therefore I now tried to supply deficiencies to the 
extent of my ability, and with the help of a friend. It was 
extremely hard to me, this working my way through the dead' 
and fragmentary teaching of an elementary grammar. It always 
seemed to me as if the mere outer acquisition of a language could 
but little help forward my true inner desire for knowledge, 
"which was deeply in earnest, and was the result of my own free 
choice. But wherever the knowledge of language linked itself 
to definite external impressions, and I was able to perceive its 
connection with facts, as, for instance, in the scientific nomencla- 
ture of botany, I could quickly make myself master of it. This 
peculiarity of mind passed by me unnoticed at the time ; I knew 
and understood too little, nay, indeed, almost nothing of myself 
as yet, even as regards the actions of my every-day life. 

A second occupation of this prison period was the preparation 
of an exercise (or academical thesis) in geometry, which I under- 
took that I might the sooner obtain an independent position in 
some profession. 

Thirdly, I studied Winckelmann's "Letters on Art." Through 
them some germs of higher artistic feeling may have been 
awakened within me ; for I examined the engravings which the 
work contains with intense delight. I could quite perceive the 
glow of pleasure that they aroused, but at the time I took little 

* *' In career ;" that is, in the prison of the university, where in the last resort 
students who fail to comply with university regulations are confined. The 
"career" still exists in German universities. It has of course nothing to do 
with the ordinary prison of the town. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 35 

account of this influence, and indeed the feeling for art altogether 
was late in developing itself in me. When I now glance over 
the earlier and later, the greater and smaller, artistic emotions 
which have swayed me, and observe their source and direction, 
I see that it was with arts (sculpture as well as music) as it was 
with languages — I never succeeded in accomplishing the outward 
acquisition of them : yet I now feel vividly that I, too, might 
have been capable of something in art had I had an artistic 
education. 

Further, there came into my hands, during the time of my 
imprisonment, a bad translation of an abridgment of the 
Zendavesta. The discovery [in these ancient Persian Scriptures] 
of similar life-truths to our own, and yet coupled with a quite 
separate religious standpoint from ours, aroused my attention, and 
gave some feeling of universality to my life and thought ; this, 
however, disappeared as quickly as it had come. 

By the beginning of the summer term in 1801 I was at length 
set free from arrest. I at once left Jena and my academical 
career, and returned to my father's house. I was just nineteen 
years old. It was but natural that I should enter my parents' 
house with heavy heart, overclouded soul, and oppressed mind. 
But spring warmed and awakened all nature once more, and 
recalled to life, too, my slumbering desire for better things. 

As yet I had busied myself but little with German literature, 
and the names of Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, and the rest I now, 
for the first time, began to learn. In this, too, it was with me 
as in so many other things ; any mental influence that came 
before me I had either to fully interweave with my inner life, 
or else altogether to forego its acquisition. 

With this peculiarity of temperament, I could master only a 
rather restricted amount of mental material. My father's library 
was once more ransacked. I found not much that was of any 
use to me, for it contained chiefly theological works ; but I seized 
with the greatest enjoyment on a book which had come out some 
ten years before in Gotha, a general view of all the sciences and 
fine arts in their various ramifications, with a short sketch of the 
object of the several sciences and of the literature of each de- 
partment. The arrangement was based upon the usual division 



36 Autobiography of Froebel. 



of the faculties, but it served to give me a general outlook, long 
desired, over the whole of human knowledge, and I was right 
glad to have found this '^ Mappe du monde litteraire " — for that 
was its title. I resolved to turn this book to the best advantage 
I could, and set about putting my resolution into practice. In 
order to make a collection of comprehensive extracts of scientific 
matters from the several periodicals received by my father 
(who shared for that purpose in a joint subscription with other 
preachers and educated people), I had already begun a sort of 
diary. The form of this journal was shapeless — everything was 
put down as it came, one thing after the other ; and thereby the 
use of it all was rendered very inconvenient. Now, however, I 
perceived the value of division according to a settled plan, and 
soon hit upon a scheme of procedure. 

I aimed at collecting all that seemed worthy to be known, all 
that was necessary for cultured men in general, and for myself in 
my own calling in particular ; and this rich treasure was to be 
brought out under favourable circumstances, or whenever need 
was, from its storehouse. Also I desired to acquire a general 
idea of those subjects which the craving for knowledge, growing 
ever more and more sharp within my soul, was always urging 
me thoroughly to work through over again. I felt happy in my 
work ; and I had already been chained to my task for several days, 
from early morning till late at night, in my little distant chamber 
with its iron-barred windows, when my father suddenly and 
unexpectedly walked into the room. He looked over what I had 
done, and remarked the quantity of paper used over it, which 
indeed was not small. Upon this cursory inspection he held my 
work for a foolish waste of time and paper ; and it would have 
been all over with my labour of love for that time, if my brother 
(Christoph), who had so often stood as protector by my side, had 
not just then been on a visit with us. He had become the 
minister of a place which lay a few hours' journey from Ober-J 
weissbach, and at this moment was staying with my parents. 
My father at once told him of what he considered my useless, 
if not indeed injurious occupation ; but my brother saw it differ- 
ently. I ventured, therefore, to continue, with the silent permis- 
sion of my father. And indeed the work proved of actual service 



Autobiography oj Froehel. 37 

to me, for it brought a certain order, breadth, and firmness into 
my ideas which had the most beneficial effect upon me. 

My father now strove to procure me a settled position in my 
■chosen calling ; or at all events to provide some active work 
which would bring me into nearer connection with it. And for 
this purpose a fortunate opportunity soon offered. Some of my 
father's relatives had property in the district of Hildburghausen, 
managed by a steward. The friendly footing on which my father 
stood with these relatives permitted me to study practical farming 
under this steward. There I took part in all the ordinary farm- 
ing occupations. These, however, did not attract me greatly, 
and I ought to have at once discovered what an unsuitable career 
I had chosen, if I had but understood my own nature. 

The thing that most painfully occupied my mind at this time 
was the absence of cordial understanding between me and my 
father. At the same time I could not help esteeming and honour- 
ing him. Notwithstanding his advanced age he was still as strong 
and as healthy in body as in mind, penetrating in speech and 
counsel, vigorous in fulfilment and actual work, earnest, nay, hard, 
in address. He had a firm, strong will, and at the same time 
was filled with noble, self-sacrificing endeavour. He never shirked 
skirmish nor battle in the cause of what he deemed the better 
part ; he carried his pen into action, as a soldier carries his sword, 
■for the true, the good, and the right. I saw that my father was 
growing old and was drawing near the grave, and it made me 
sorry to feel that I was yet a stranger to such a father. I loved 
him, and felt how nmch good resulted from that love ; so I took 
the resolution to write to my father, and by letter to show him 
my true nature, so far as I could understand myself Long did I 
revolve this letter in my mind ; never did I feel strength nor 
courage to write it. Meanwhile a letter called me back home in 
November, after I had been some months engaged on the estate. 
I was called upon to help my father, now quite weak and almost 
bedridden ; at all events I could assist him in his correspondence. 
Family and other cares and the activities of life absorbed my 
whole time. What I meant to have done in my letter now 
happily became possible in speech from man to man, in glances 
from eye to eye. My father was occupied by cares for my future 



38 Autobiography of Froebel. 

prospects up till the end. He died in' February 1802. May his 
enlightened spirit look down full of peace and blessing upon me 
as I write ; may he now; be content with that son who so loved 
him ! 

I now stood in every respect my own master, and might decide 
the direction of my future life for myself, according to the circum- 
stances which lay around me. With this intention I once more 
left the paternal roof at Easter, to undertake the post of clerk in 
the Office of Woods and Forests which formed one part of the 
general administration (divided into Treasury, Woods and Forests, 
and Tithe departments) of the as yet episcopal territory of Bam- 
berg.* My district lay amidst unusual and lovely scenery ; my 
duties were light, and when they were over I was free to roam 
in the neighbourhood, now doubly beautiful in the springtime, 
to live out my life in freedom, and gain strength for mind and soul. 

Thus once again I lived much out of doors and in companion- 
ship with Nature. My chief was proud of the possession of a 
considerable library, of which I made good use ; and in this manner 
many of the publications then issuing from the press, and treating 
of matters connected with the occupation which I had chosen, 
passed through my hands, as well as those on other subjects. 
I was especially attracted by some volumes which contained 
aphorisms, thoughts, and observations on conduct, selected from 
ancient and modern writers and thinkers. My character grew upon 
and entwined itself around these aphorisms, which I could easily 
glance over, and as easily retain, and, more than all, which I 
could weave into my own life and thoughts, and by which I could 
examine my conduct. I made extracts of those which were in 
closest accord with my inner life, and bore them always about my 
person. 

Amidst these surroundings my life contained many elements of 
growth. Although my chief, as well as his family, was a strong 
Roman Catholic, he chose a (Protestant) private tutor recom- 
mended to him by Professor Carus. This gentleman had many 

* The Prince-Bishop of Bamberg shared in the general Napoleonic earth- 
quake. The domain of the bishopric went to Bavaria ultimately, the title alone 
remaining to the Church. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 39 

excellent qualities, so that we soon became great friends. We 
had also both of us the pleasure of being acquainted with some 
highly -cultured people, the families of the physician, of the 
minister, and of the schoolmaster in the neighbouring Protestant 
village, which was as yet still a fief of the Empire.* My friend 
the tutor was a young man quite out of the common, with an 
actively inquiring mind ; especially fond of making plans for wide- 
stretching travels, and comprehensive schemes of education. Our 
intercourse and our life together were very confidential and open, 
for the subjects he cared for were those dear to me ; but we were 
of diametrically opposite natures. He was a man of scholastic 
training, and I had been deficiently educated. He was a youth 
who had plunged into strife with the world and society; my 
thought was how to live in peace with myself and all men. Be- 
sides, our outward lives bore such different aspects that a truly 
intimate friendship could not exist between us. Nevertheless our 
very contrasts bound us more closely together than we deemed. 

Practical land-surveying at this time chiefly interested me, for 
it at once satisfied my love for out-of-doors life, and fully occupied 
my intelligence. But the everlasting scribbling which now fell to 
my share I could not long endure, in spite of my otherwise pleasant 
life. 

Early in the spring of 1803 I left my situation and went to 
Bamberg, feeling sure that the political changes by which Bamberg 
had been transferred to Bavaria, and the general survey of the 
district which was therefore in contemplation, would immediately 
provide me with a sphere of work suited to my capabilities. My 
expectations were not falsified. In pursuance of my plan I intro- 
duced myself to the land-surveyors in Bamberg, and at once 
received employment from one of them. He had had considerable 
surveys in hand, and was still engaged upon them. As I showed 
some proficiency in mapping, he entrusted me with the preparation 
of the necessary maps which accompanied the surveys. This 



* Shared the fate of the Bamberg possessions, and of many other princi- 
palities and small domains at that time existent; namely, absorption under the 
Napoleonic regime into the neighbouring States. This went to Bavaria; see 
the text, later on. 



40 Autobiography of Froebel. 



kept me employed for some time on work sufficiently remunera- 
tive for my needs. 

Of course the question in hand with the new Government was 
the appointment of land-surveyors, and those who were resident 
in the town were invited to send in maps of Bamberg as specimens 
of their work. Through the instruction I had enjoyed in my 
youth I was not unacquainted with such work. I therefore took 
pleasure in drawing a map, which I sent in. My work was 
approved, and I received something for it ; but being a stranger, 
inexperienced, and young, and having hardly taken the best way 
towards my purposed aim, I obtained no appointment. 

After I had finished the work I have mentioned the survey of a 
small private property was put into my hands to carry out. From 
this engagement ensued consequences which were most important 
forme. I note only one point here. One of the joint owners of this 
property was a young doctor of philosophy, who leaned towards 
the new school of Schelling. It could hardly be expected but that 
we should talk over things which stirred our mental life, and so 
it came about that he lent me Schelling's '' Bruno, oder iiber die 
Welt-seele " * to read. What I read in that book moved me pro- 
foundly, and I thought I really understood it. The friendly young 
fellow, not much older than myself — we had already met in Jena, 
— saw the lively interest I was taking in the book, and, in fact, I 
talked it over with him many a time. One day, after we had been 
to see an important picture-gallery together, he addressed me in 
these words, which from his mouth sounded startlingly strange, 
and which at the time seemed to me inexplicable : — 

^' Guard yourself against philosophy ; she leads you towards 
doubt and darkness. Devote yourself to art, which gives life, 
peace, and joy." 

It is true I retained the young man's words, but I could not under- 
stand them, for I regarded philosophy as a necessary part of the 
life of mankind, and could not grasp the notion that one could be 
verging towards darkness and doubt when one calmly investigated 
the inner life. Art, on the other hand, lay much further from me 
than philosophy ; for except a profound enjoyment in works of art 

— — J 

* Bruno, or the Over-Soul. 



Autobiography of FroebeL 41 

^for which I could give no clear reason), no glimmering of an active 
aesthetic sense had yet dawned upon me. This remark of my 
friend the doctor's called my attention to myself, however, and to 
my life and its aim, and made me aware of two very different 
and widely separate systems of life. 

My friend, the tutor of the Government official under whom I 
had served at Bamberg, had in the meantime left his situation. 
He told me before leaving that he had it in his mind to go to 
Frankfurt, and thence into France. I saw his departure with 
regret, little dreaming that life would in a few years bring us 
together again, and that he would indirectly decide my future 
career. But, as it so often happens in life, parting in this instance 
but led up to meeting, and meeting to parting. 

The occurrences 1 have named had little result upon my out- 
ward life, which for the time ran its peaceful course. I pass over 
many circumstances important to the uplifting and development of 
my character and my moral life, and come at once to the close of 
my stay in Bamberg. 

I had now once more earnestly to turn my attention to pro- 
curing certain and settled employment. In truth, as regarded my 
future, I stood quite alone. I had no one to lend me a helping 
hand, so I made up my mind to go forward, trusting only in God 
and destiny. I determined to seek for a situation by means of 
the AUgemeine Anzeiger der Deiitschen^ a paper then very much 
read, and I thought it would be good to send in to the editor, as a 
proof of my assertions of competency, an architectural design, and 
also a specimen of my work in practical surveying, together with 
explanations of both of them. As soon as my plan was fully 
conceived I set to work at it. For the architectural sketch I chose 
a design of a nobleman's country mansion^ with the surrounding 
outbuildings. When I had finished it, with very few professional 
appliances to help me, it contained a complete working out of all 
the various necessary plans, and as a critical test of its accuracy 
and suitability to the proposed scale of dimensions, I added a 
statement of all the particulars and conditions involved in it. For 
the land-surveying I chose a table of measurements compiled from 



* "General Intelligencer of the German people." 



42 Autobiography of Froebel. 



the map I had previously drawn, which I carried through under 
certain arbitrary assumptions. These works, together with my 
advertisement, I sent in 1803 to the office of the paper I have 
mentioned, with the request that the editor, after reading my 
testimonials and inspecting my work, would add a few confir- 
matory words as to my qualifications. Work and testimonials 
ahke were to the satisfaction of the editor, and my request for an 
editorial comment was granted. I received several offers, each 
one containing something tempting about it. It was difficult to 
make a choice, but at last I decided to accept a position offered me 
as private secretary to the President and Privy-Councillor Von 
Dewitz, of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, at this time resident on one of 
his estates, Gross-Milchow. 

Amongst the other oflfers was one from Privy-Councillor Von 
Voldersdorf, who was looking out for an accountant for his estates 
in the Oberpfalz.* This situation did not suit me so well as the 
other, but I accepted a proposition to fill up the time till the 
arrangements for the other post had been completed, by going 
down to these estates of Herr Von Voldersdorf, and bringing into 
order, according to a certain specified plan, the heavy accounts of 
his steward, which were at this time much in arrear. I set off 
for the Oberpfalz in the first days of 1804. But I was soon called 
away to Mecklenburg to the situation at Gross-Milchow which I 
had definitively chosen, and in the raw, frightfully severe winter- 
time of February I journeyed thither by the mail-coach. Yet, 
short as had been my stay in the Oberpfalz, and continual and 
uninterrupted as had been my labour in order that I might get 
through the work I had undertaken, the time I spent in Bavaria 
yielded me much that was instructive. The men, ingenuous, lively 
young fellows from Saxony and Prussia, received me very kindly, 
and the variety of their different services and their readiness to 
talk about them, gave me a good insight into the inner relationship 
between the landed aristocracy and their retainers. In recalling 
these circumstances I thankfully acknowledge how my ever-tender 
loving destiny took pains kindly to prepare me for each vocation 
next to come. I had never before had the opportunity to see the 

* Upper Palatinate, a province in the north of Bavaria. 



Autobiography of Froehel. 45 

mode of keeping accounts used on a great estate, to say nothing of 
keeping them myself, and here I had this very work to do, and 
that after a plan both ample and clear, in which every particular, 
down to the single details, was carefully provided for. This was 
of the greatest service to me. Precisely the conduct of such well- 
ordered accounts was to be my work later on ; therefore, having 
the general plan I have referred to firmly established in my mind, 
and being well practised in its operation, I set off well prepared 
for my new sphere of work. Thanks to this, I was able to satisfy 
most completely not only my new employer, but also his lady, 
who used to examine everything minutely with severe scrutiny. 

The surroundings of Herr Von Dewitz's estate were uncommonly 
pretty for that part of the country. Lakes and hills and the fresh 
foliage of trees abounded, and what Nature had perhaps overlooked 
here and there Art had made good. My good fortune has always led 
me amongst pretty natural scenery. I have ever thankfully enjoyed 
what Nature has spread before my eyes, and she has always been 
in true motherly unity with me. As soon as I had gained some 
facility in it my new work became simple, ran its regular course 
which was repeated week by week, and gave me time to think 
about my own improvement. 

However, my engagement on this estate was, after all, but a 
short one. The bent of my life and disposition was already taken. 
A star had arisen within my mind which I was impelled to follow. 
On this account I could regard my employment at this time only 
as a sheet anchor, to be let go as soon as an opportunity offered 
itself to resume my vocation. This opportunity was not long^in 
making its appearance. 

My uncle (Hoffmann), who, like my brother, bore me always 
lovingly in his thoughts, had lately died. Even on his deathbed 
he thought of me, and charged my brother to do all he could to 
find me some settled occupation for life, and at any rate to pre- 
vent me from leaving the post I held at the moment before I had 
some reasonable prospect of a secure and better engagement else- 
where. Providence willed it otherwise. His death, through the 
small inheritance which thereby came to me, gave me the means 
of fulfilling the dearest wish of my heart. So wonderfully does 
God direct the fate of men. 



44 Atitobiography of Froehel, 

I must mention one circumstance before I part for ever in this 
account of my life from my gentle, loving second-father. On my 
journey to Mecklenburg, when I saw my uncle (at Stadt-Ilm) for 
the last time, I had the deep joy of a talk with him, such as a 
trusting father might hold with his grown-up son, bound to him 
by every tie of affection. He freely pointed out the faults which 
had shown themselves in my boyhood, and told me of the anxiety 
they had at one time caused him, and in this way he went back 
to the time when I was taken into his family, and to the causes of 
that. " I loved your mother very dearly," said he ; ^'indeed, she 
was my favourite out of all my brothers and sisters. In you I 
seemed to see my sister once more, and for her love I took charge 
of you, and bestowed on you that affection which hitherto had 
been hers alone." And dear as my own mother had become to 
me already through the many kind things I had heard said of her, 
so that I had even formed a distinct conception of what she was 
like, and seemed actually to remember her, she became even 
dearer to me after these reminiscences of my uncle than before, 
for did I not owe to her this noble and high-minded second-father? 
My conversation with my uncle first made clear to me what in 
later life I have found repeatedly confirmed — that the sources, 
springs, or motives of one's present actions often lie far away 
beyond the present time, outside the present circumstances, and 
are altogether disconnected with the persons with whom one is 
concerned at the moment then passing. I have also repeatedly 
observed in the course of my life that ties are the faster, the more 
enduring, and the truer the more they spring from higher, 
universal, and impersonal sources. 

The person who in Mecklenburg stood next above me in 
position in the house and in the family was the private tutor, 
whom I found already there — a young doctor of philosophy of 
Gottingen University. We did not come much into contact on 
the whole, since he as a university graduate took a far higher stand 
than I ; but through him I came into some connection with the 
clergymen of the district, and this was of benefit to me. As for 
the farmers, the bailiffs, etc., their hospitable nature was quite 
sufficient of itself to afford me a hearty welcome. Thus I lived in 
a way I had for a long time felt I much needed, amidst many-sided 



Autobiography of Froebel, 45 

companionable good-fellowship, cheerful and free. Healthy as I 
was in body and soul, in head and heart, my thoughts full of bright- 
ness and cheerfulness, it was not long before my mind again felt 
an eager desire for higher culture. The young tutor went away, 
and after his departure my craving for culture grew keener and 
keener, for I missed the intellectual converse I had been able to 
hold with him. But I was soon again to receive succour. 

The President,* besides the family at home, had two sons at the 
Padagogium in Halle. t They came to visit their parents, accom- 
panied by their special tutor, a gentleman destined to become 
famous later on as the renowned scholar. Dr. Wollweide. 

Dr. Wollweide was a mathematician and a physicist, and I 
found him freely communicative. He was so kind as to mention 
and explain to me the many various problems he had set before 
himself to work out. This caused my long slumbering and sup- 
pressed love for mathematics as a science, and for physics, to 
spring up again, fully awake. For some time past my tendency 
had leaned more and more towards architecture, and, indeed, I 
had now firmly determined to choose that as my profession, and 
to study it henceforth with all earnestness. My intellectual 
cravings and the choice of a profession seemed at last to run 
together, and I felt continually bright and happy at the thought 
I seized the opportunity of the presence of the scholar whom I 
have named to learn from him what were the best books on 
those subjects which promised to be useful to me, and my first 
care was to become possessed of them. Architecture was now 
vigorously studied, and other books, too, were not suffered to lie 
idle. 

The following books took great hold upon me : Proschke's 
** Fragments on Anthropology " (a small unpretending book), 
NovaHs' Works, and Arndt's '' Germany" and " Europe." % The 

* Herr Von Dewitz, his employer. 

f The Padagogium in Halle answered somewhat to our grammar schools 
with a mixture of boarders and day-scholars. It was founded by Francke in 
1712, after the ideas of the famous Basedow, and was endowed by means of a 
public subscription. 

X These were two pamphlets by the famous patriot and poet Ernst Moritz 
Amdt (1769- 1 860), published in 1805. 



.46 Autobiography of Froehel. 

first of these at one stroke drew together, so that I could recog- 
nise in them myself as a connected whole, my outer existence, 
my inner character, my disposition, and the course of my life. I 
for the first time realised myself and my life as a single entity in 
contrast to the whole world outside of me.* The second book 
lay before me the most secret emotions, perceptions, and inten- 
tions of my inmost soul, clear, open, and vivid. If I parted with 
that book it seemed as if I had parted with myself; if anything 
happened to the book I felt as though it had happened to me, 
only more deeply and with greater pain. The third book taught 
me of man in his broad historical relations, set before me the 
general life of my kind as one great whole, and showed me ho^v 
I was bound to my own nation, both to my ancestors and my 
contemporaries. Yet the service this last book had done me 
was hardly recognised at this time ; for my thoughts were bent 
on a definite outward aim, that of becoming an architect. But I 
could at all events recognise the new eager life which had seized 
me, and to mark this change to myself, I now began to use as a 
Christian name the last instead of the first of my baptismal 
names.t Other circumstances also impelled me to make this 
change; and, further, it freed me from the memory of the many 
disagreeable impressions of my boyhood which clustered round 
the name I was then called. 

The time had come when I could no longer remain satisfied 
with my present occupation ; and I therefore sent in my resignation. 
The immediate outward circumstance which decided me was 
this. I had kept up a correspondence with the young man whom 
I had known as a private tutor when I held a Government clerk- 
ship in Bamberg, and who left his situation to go to Frankfurt, 
and then on into France.J He had afterwards lived some time 
in Frankfurt, occupying himself with teaching, and now was again 
a private tutor in a merchant's house in the Netherlands. I im- 

* That is, Froebel realised the distinction of the subject-world from the 
object-world. 

f That is, he signed Wilhelm Froebel instead of Friedrich Froebel, for a 
time. It cannot have been for long, however. 

X The young man mentioned on page 39. 



A utobiography of Froebel. 47 

parted to him my desire to leave my present post, and to seek a 
situation with an architect; and asked his opinion whether I 
should not be most Hkely to effect my object at Frankfurt, where 
so many streams of diverse life and of men intermingle. And as 
my friend was accurately acquainted with the ins and outs of 
Frankfurt life, I asked him to give me such indications as he 
■ could of the best road to take towards the fulfilment of my 
designs. My friend entered heartily into my project, and wrote 
to me that he intended himself to spend some time in Frankfurt 
again in the early summer ; and he suggested that if I could 
manage to be there at the same time, a mutual consideration of 
the whole matter on the spot would be the best way of going to 
work. In consequence of this I at once firmly decided to leave 
my situation in the following spring, and to join my friend at 
Frankfurt. But where was I to find the money necessary for 
such a journey ? I had required the whole of my salary up till 
now to cover my personal expenses and the settlement of some 
debts I had run up at Bamberg. 

In this perplexity I wrote again to my eldest brother, who had 
up till now understood me so well, and I asked him for assist- 
ance. I was at this time in a peculiar dilemma. On the one hand, 
I felt very keenly that I must get out of my present position, while 
on the other, by my unchanging changeableness I feared to wear 
out the indulgence and patience of my worthy brother. In this 
strait T just gave him what seemed to me as I wrote it an exact 
account of my real state of mind ; telling him that I could only 
find my life-aim in a continual striving towards inward perfection. 

My brother's answer arrived. With a joyful tremor and 
agitation I held it in my hands. For hours together I carried it 
about me before I unsealed it, for days together before I read it ; 
it seemed so improbable that my brother would feel himself able 
to help me towards the accomplishment of the desire of my soul, 
and I feared to find in that letter the frustration of my life's 
endeavour. When, after some days of vacillation between hope 
and doubt, I could bear the situation no longer, and opened the 
letter, I was not a little astonished that it began by addressing 
me at once in terms of the most moving sympathy. As I read 
on the contents agitated me deeply. The letter gave me the 



48 Autobiography of Froebel. 

news of my beloved uncle's death, and informed me of legacies 
left by him to me and my brothers. Thus fate itself, though in a 
manner so deeply affecting, provided me with the means for 
working out my next plan. 

The die was now cast. From this moment onwards my inner 
life received a quite new signification and a fresh character, and 
yet I was unconscious of all this. I was like a tree which 
flowers and knows it not. My inward and outward vocation and 
endeavour, my true life-destiny and my apparent life-aim were 
still, however, in a state of separation, and indeed of conflict, of 
which I had not the remotest conception. My resolve held firm 
to make architecture my profession ; it was purely as a future 
architect that I took leave of all my companions. 

At the end of April 1805, with peace in my heart, cheerfulness. 
in my soul, an eager disposition, and a mind full of energy, I 
quitted my old surroundings. The first days of an unusually 
lovely May (and I might here again recall what 1 pointed out 
above, that my inner and personal life invariably went familiarly 
hand in hand with external Nature) I spent with a friend, as a 
holiday, in the best sense of the word. This was a dear friend 
of mine, who lived on an exceedingly finely-situated farm in the 
Uckermark.''^ Art had improved the beauty of the somewhat 
simple natural features of the place, in the most cunningly-devised 
fashion. In this beautiful, retired, and even solitary spot, I 
flitted, as it were, from one flower to another like a very butterfly. 
I had always passionately loved Nature in her adornments of 
colour and of dewy pearls, and clung to her closely with the 
gladsomeness of youth. Here I made the discovery that a land- 
scape which we look upon in sympathetic mood shines with 
enhanced brilliancy ; or as I put the truth into words at the time, 
" The more intimately we attach ourselves to Nature, the more 
she glows with beauty and returns us all our affection." This 
was the first time my mind had ventured to give expression 



* The pretty district bordering the river Ucker, in pleasing contrast with 
the sandy plains of Brandenburg ; it lies at no great distance from Berlin, 
so that it forms the favourite goal for a short excursion with the people of, 
that arid city. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 49 

to a sentiment which thrilled my soul. Often in later life has 
this phrase proved itself a very truth to me. My friend one day 
begged me to v^^rite something in his album : I did so unwillingly. 
To write anything borrowed went against me, for it jarred with 
the relations existing between me and the book's owner ; and 
to think of anything original was a task I felt to be almost beyond 
my powers. However, after long thinking it over in the open 
air, comparing my friend's life and my own in all their aspects, 
I decided upon the following phrase : — " To thee may destiny 
soon grant a settled home and a loving wife ! To me, while she 
drives me restless abroad, may she leave but just so much time 
as to allow me fairly to discern my relations with my inmost self 
and with the world." Then my thoughts grew clear, and I 
continued, " Thou givest man bread ; let my aim be to give man 
himself." 

I did not even then fully apprehend the meaning of what I had 
said and written, or I could not of course have held so firmly to 
my architecture scheme. I knew as yet neither myself nor my 
real life, neither my goal nor my life's path thither. And long 
afterwards, when I had for some time been engaged upon my 
true vocation, I was not a little astonished over the prophetic 
nature of this album-phrase of mine. 

In later life I have often observed that a man's spirit, when it 
first begins to stir within him, utters many a far-away prophetic 
thought, which yet, in riper age, attains its realisation, its 
consummation. I have especially noticed this recently in bright- 
minded and active children ; in fact, I have often been quite 
astounded at the really deep truths expressed by them in their 
butterfly life. I seemed to catch glimpses of a symbolic truth in 
this ; as if indeed the human soul were even already beginning 
to shake itself free from its chrysalis-wrapping, or were bursting, 
off the last fragments of the eggshell. 

In May 1805, while on my journey, I visited my eldest brother,, 
of whom I have so often spoken, and shall have yet so often to 
speak, and found him in another district, to which he had been 
appointed minister. He was as kind and full of affection as ever ; 
and instead of blaming me, spoke with especial approval of my 
new plans. He told me of projects which had allured him in his 

4 



50 Autobiography oj Froebel. 

youth, and still allured, but which he had lacked the strength of mind 
to speak of. His father's advice and authority had overawed him 
in youth, and now the chain of a settled position in life held him 
fast. To follow the inward voice faithfully and without swerving 
was the advice he offered me, and he wrote this memorandum in 
my album when I left him, as a life motto : — " The task of man 
is a struggle towards an end. Do your duty as a man, dear 
brother, with firmness and resolution, fight against the difficulties 
which will thrust themselves in your path, and be assured you 
will attain the end." 

Thus cheered by sympathy and approval, I went my way 
from my brother's, strengthened and confirmed in my determina- 
tion. My road lay over the Wartburg.* Luther's life and 
fame were then not nearly so well appreciated and so generally 
understood as now, after the Tercentenary festival of the Reforma- 
tion.! My early education had not been of the kind to give me 
a complete survey of Luther's life and its struggle ; I was hardly 
thoroughly acquainted indeed with the separate events of it. Yet 
I had learnt in some sort to appreciate this fighter for the truth, 
by having in my last years at school to read aloud the Augsburg 
Confession to the assembled congregation during the afternoon 
service on certain specified Sundays, according to an old-fashioned 
Church custom. t I was filled with a deep sense of reverence as 
I climbed '' Luther's path." thinking at the same time that Luther 
had left much behind still to be done, to be rooted out, or to be 
built up. 

Shortly before Midsummer Day, as I had arranged with my 
friend, I reached Frankfurt. During my many weeks' journey in 
th lovely springtime, my thoughts had had time to grow calm 
and collected. My friend, too, was true to his word ; and we at 
once set to work together to prepare a prosperous future for me. 
The plan of seeking a situation with an architect was still firmly 

* Whither Luther fled for refuge after the Diet of Worms in 1521 ; and 
where, protected by the Elector of Saxony, he lay concealed for a year. 
During this year he translated the Bible. 

t Held all over Protestant Germany in 1817. 

% Our children still in like manner " say their catechism " at afternoon 
church in old-fashioned country places. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 51 

held to, and circumstances seemed favourable for its realisation ; 
but my friend at last advised me to secure a livelihood by 
giving lessons for a time, until we should find something more 
definite than had yet appeared. Every prospect of a speedy 
fulfilment of my wishes seemed to offer, and yet in proportion 
as my hopes grew more clear, a certain feeling of oppression 
manifested itself more and more within me. I soon began 
seriously to ask myself, therefore : — 

" How is this ? Canst thou do work in architecture worthy of 
a man's life ? Canst thou use it to the culture and the ennoble- 
ment of mankind ? " 

I answered my own question to my satisfaction. Yet I could 
not conceal from myself that it would be difficult to follow this 
profession conformably with the ideal I had now set before me. 
Notwithstanding this, I still remained faithful to my original 
scheme, and soon began to study under an architect with a view 
to fitting myself for my new profession. 

My friend, unceasingly working towards the accomplishment 
of my views, introduced me to a friend of his, Herr Gruner, the 
headmaster at that time of the Frankfurt Model School,'^' which 
had not long been established. Here I found open-minded young 
people who met me readily and ingenuously, and our conversation 
soon ranged freely over life and its many-sided aspects. My own 
life and its object were also brought forward and talked over. I 
spoke openly, manifesting myself just as I was, saying what I 
knew and what I did not know about myself. 

** Oh," said Gruner, turning to me, " give up architecture ; it 
is not your vocation at all. Become a teacher. We want a 
teacher in our own school. Say you agree, and the place shall be 
yours." 

My friend was for accepting Gruner's proposal, and I began to 
hesitate. Added to this, an external circumstance now came to 
my knowledge which hastened my decision. I received the news 
namely, that the whole of my testimonials, and particularly those 



* This school, still in existence up to 1865 and iai-^r, but now no longer in 
being, had been founded under Gruner, a pupil of Pestalozzi, to embody and 
carry out the educational principles of the latter. 



52 Autobiography of Froebel. 

that I had received in Jena, which were amongst them, had been 
lost. They had been sent to a gentleman who took a lively 
interest in my affairs, and I never found out through what mis- 
chance they were lost. I now read this to mean that Providence 
itself had thus broken up the bridge behind me, and cut off all 
return. I deliberated no longer, but eagerly and joyfully seized 
the hand held out to me, and quickly became a teacher in the 
Model School of Frankfurt-on-the-Main.* 

The watchword of teaching and of education was at this time 
the name of Pestalozzi. It soon became evident to me that 
Pestalozzi was to be the watchword of my life also ; for not only 
Gruner, but also a second teacher at the school, were pupils of 
Pestalozzi, and the first-named had even written a book on his 
method of teaching. The name had a magnetic effect upon me, 
the more so as during my self-development and self-education it had 
seemed to me an aspiration — a something perhaps never to be 
familiarly known, yet distinct enough, and at all events inspiriting. 
And now I recalled how in my early boyhood, in my father's house, 
I had got a certain piece of news out of some newspaper or 
another, or at least that is how the matter stood in my memory. 
I gathered that in Switzerland a man of forty, who lived retired 
from the world, — Pestalozzi by name, — had taught himself, alone 
and unaided, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Just at that time I 
was feeling the slowness and insufficiency of my own development, 
and this news quieted me, and filled me with the hope and trust 
that I, too, might, through my own endeavour, repair the deficien- 
cies of my bringing-up. As I have grown older I have also found 
it consolatory to remark how the culture of vigorous, capable men 
has not seldom been acquired remarkably late in life. And in 
general I must acknowledge it as part of the groundwork under- 
lying my life and the evolution of my character, that the contempla- 
tion of the actual existences of real men always wrought upon 
my soul, as it were, by a fruitful rain and the genial warmth of 
sunshine; while the isolated truths these lives enshrined, the 

* There is a smaller town called Frankfurt, on the Oder. "Am Main," 
or 'An der Oder," is, therefore, added to the greater or the smaller Frankfurt 
respectively, for distinction's sake. 



Autobiography of Froebel, 53 



principles those who lived them had thought out and embodied 
in some phrase or another, fell as precious seed-corn, as it were, 
or as solvent salt crystals upon my thirsty spirit. And while on 
this head I cannot help especially calling to mind how deep and 
lasting was the impression made upon me in my last year at 
school by the accounts in the Holy Scriptures of the lives of 
earnestly striving youths and men. I mention it here, but I shall 
have to return to the subject later on.* 

Now to return to the new life which I had begun. It was only 
to be expected that each thing and all things I heard of Pestalozzi 
seized powerfully upon me ; and this more especially applies to a 
sketchy narrative of his life, his aims, and his struggles, which I 
found in a literary newspaper, where also was stated Pestalozzi's 
well-known desire and endeavour— namely, in some nook or corner 
of the world, no matter where, to build up an institution for the 
education of the poor, after his own heart. This narrative, espe- 
cially the last point of it, was to my heart like oil poured on fire. 
There and then the resolution was taken to go and look upon this 
man who could so think and so endeavour to act, and to study his 
life and its work. 

Three days afterwards (it was towards the end of August 1805) 
I was already on the road to Yverdon.t where Pestalozzi had 
not long before established himself. Once arrived there, and 
having met with the friendliest reception by Pestalozzi and his 
teachers, because of my introductions from Gruner and his col- 
leagues, I was taken, like every other visitor, to the class-rooms, 
and there left more or less to my own devices. 1 was still very 
inexperienced, both in the theory and practice of teaching, relying 
chiefly in such things upon my memory of my own school-time, and 
I was therefore very little fitted for a rigorous examination into 
details of method and into the way they were connected to form 
a whole system. The latter point, indeed, was neither clearly 
thought out, nor was it worked out in practice. What I saw was 
to me at once elevating and depressing, arousing and also bewil- 



* He never does, for this interesting record remains a fragment, 
t Situate at the head of the lake of Neuchatel, but in the canton of Vaud, 
in Switzerland. 



54 Autobiography of Froebel. 

dering. My visit lasted only a fortnight. I worked away and 
tried to take in as much as I could ; especially as, to help me in the 
duties I had undertaken, I felt impelled to give a faithful account 
in writing of my views on the whole system, and the effect it 
had produced upon me. With this idea I tried to hold fast in my 
memory all I heard. Nevertheless I soon felt that heart and mind 
would alike come to grief in a man of my disposition if I were to 
stay longer with Pestalozzi, much as I desired to do so. At that 
time the life there was especially vigorous ; internally and exter- 
nally it was a living, moving, stirring existence, for Prince Har- 
denberg, commissioned by the Austrian Government, had come 
to examine thoroughly into Pestalozzi's work.* 

The fruits of my short stay with Pestalozzi were as follows : — 
In the first place, I saw the whole training of a great educational 
institution, worked upon a clear and firmly-settled plan of teach- 
ing. I still possess the "teaching-plan " of Pestalozzi's institution 
in use at that time. This teaching-plan contains, in my opinion,, 
much that is excellent, somewhat also that is prejudicial. Ex- 
cellent, I thought, was the contrivance of the so-called "exchange 
classes." t In each subject the instruction was always given 
through the entire establishment at the same time. Thus the 
subjects for teaching were settled for every class, but the pupils 
were distributed amongst the various classes according to their 
proficiency in the subject in hand, so that the whole body of 
pupils was redistributed in quite a distinct division for each 
subject. The advantage of this contrivance struck me as so 
undeniable and so forcible that I have never since relinquished 
it in my educational work, nor could I now bring myself to do 
so. The prejudicial side of the teaching-plan, against which I 
intuitively rebelled, although my own tendencies on the subject 
were as yet so vague and dim, lay, in my opinion, in its in- 
completeness and its onesidedness. Several subjects of teaching 

* Austria was not the only country alive to the importance of this new 
teaching. Prussia and Holland also sent commissioners to study Pestalozzi's 
system, and so did many other smaller states. The Czar (Alexander I.) sent 
for Pestalozzi to a personal interview at Basel. 

f Wandernde Classen. Some of our later English schools have adopted a 
similar plan. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 55 

and education highly important to the all-round harmonious 
development of a man seemed to me thrust far too much into 
the background, treated in step-motherly fashion, and superficially 
worked out. 

The results of the arithmetical teaching astounded me, yet I 
could not follow it into its larger applications and wider extent. 
The mechanical rules of this branch of instruction seemed to 
whirl me round and round as in a whirlpool. The teacher was 
Krusi. The teaching, in spite of the brilliant results within its 
own circle, and in spite of the sharpness of the quickened powers 
of perception and comprehension in the children by which it 
attained those results, yet, to my personal taste, had something 
too positive in its setting forth, too mechanical in its reception. 
And Josias Schmid * had already, even at that time, felt the 
imperfection of this branch of instruction. He imparted to me 
the first ground-principles of his later work on the subject, and 
his ideas at once commanded my approval, for I saw they 
possessed two important properties, manysidedness and an 
exhaustive scientific basis. 

The teaching of drawing was also very incomplete, especially 
in its first commencement ; but drawing from right-angled prisms 
with equal sides, in various lengths, which was one of the 
exercises required at a later stage, and drawing other mathe- 
matical figures by means of which the comprehension of the 
forms of actual objects of every-day life might be facilitated were 
much more to my mind. Schmid's method of drawing had not 
yet appeared. 

In physical geography, the usual school course, with its many- 
coloured maps, had been left far behind. Tobler, an active young 
man, was the principal teacher in this section. Still, even this 
branch had far too much positive instruction f for me. Particu- 
larly unpleasant to me was the commencement of the course, 
which began with an account of the bottom of the sea, although 



* One of Pestalozzi's teachers, to whom especially was confided the arrange- 
ment of the arithmetical studies. 

t By positive instruction Froebel means learning by heart, or by being told 
results ; as distinguished from actual education or development of the faculties, 
and the working out of results by pupils for themselves. 



56 Autobiography of Froebel. 

the pupils could have no conception of their own as to its nature 
or dimensions. Nevertheless the teaching aroused astonishment, 
and carried one involuntarily along with it through the impres- 
sion made by the lightning-quickness of the answers of the 
children. 

In natural history I heard only the botany. The principal 
teacher, who had also prepared the plan of instruction in this 
subject for all the school, was Hopf, like the rest an active young 
man. The school course arranged and carried out by him had 
much that was excellent. In each separate instance — for example, 
the shape and position of leaves, flowers, etc. — he would first 
obtain all the possible varieties of form by question and answer 
between the class and himself, and then he would select from 
the results the form which was before them in nature. These 
lessons, which were in this way made so attractive, and whose 
merits spoke for themselves, showed, however, when it came 
to practical application, an unpractical, I had almost said, a self- 
contradictory aspect. 

(When, afterwards, in 1808, I visited Yverdon for the second 
time, I found to my regret neither Tobler nor Hopf there.) 

With the method used for the German language I could not at 
all bring myself into sympathy, although it has been introduced 
into later school books elsewhere. Here also the arbitrary and 
non-productive style of teaching ran strongly counter to me at 
every step. 

Singing was taught from figures.* Reading was taught from 
Pestalozzi's well-known " A. B. C." 

[Memorandum. — All this lay dark within me, its value un- 
recognised even by myself. But my intellectual position tended 
to become more settled by passing through these experiences. 
As to my state at the time, I have, as accurately as may be, 
described it above, as at once exalted and depressed, animated 
and dull. That Pestalozzi himself was carried away and 



* This must mean the system mvented by Rousseau, a modern development 
of which is the Cheve system now widely used on the Continent. In England 
the tonic-sol-fa notation, which uses syllables instead of figures, but which rests 
fundamentally on the same principles, is much more familiar. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 57 



bewildered by this great intellectual machine of his appears from 
he S that he could never give any definite account of l^s .dea 
his Plan his intention. He always said, "Go and see lor 
r^M" rverv "ood for him who knew how to look, how to 
r hL to perc:We) • " it works splendidly - " * It was at that 
^me indeed 'surp is ng and inexplicable to me that Pestalozz.'s 
oTuB character did not win every one's heart as it won mine 
and compe the staff of teachers to draw together into a connected 
whole penetrated with life and intellectual strength m every 
;r'^^ morning and eveningaaj.^^^^ 

fh:ttrsryig;nr^:es\7r:nhappy dissensions after. 

"TJeft Yverll\n mid-October (zSoj) with a settled resolution 
to riturn thther as soon as possible for a longer stay. As soon 
IsT^ot back to Frankfurt, I received my definite appomtment 
™m the Consilrium.t ihe work that awaited me upon my 
irval from Switzerland at the Model Schoo (wh-h was >n fa<:' 
Properly two schools, one for boys and one for girls was a share 
properly iwu , . , ^^ educational course and 

f '^:"ZTZttZ::Sls^m..^ The school contained 
::f fiv cla^^es of boys and two or three of gi;'s ; altogether 
about two hundred children. The staff consisted of four per- 
manent masters and nine visiting masters. .• „ „f the 
As I threw myself heartily into the consideration of the 
nefessities and the present position of the ^^f'^^^J^ *^ 
instruction given there, the working out of this plan was 
a"moswhollWn my hands, under the conditions imposed upon us. 
The heme I produced not only succeeded in winning the appro- 
Ltln of the Lthorities^bmproved^i^el^^ 

^^^^^^::^^^':^^-^^ -- - — 

the later years of Pestalozzi, are here referred to convocation, 

take a post in a school without the approval of thi. body. 



58 Autobiography of Froebel. 

of service beneficial in the highest degree, both to the institutioa 
itself and to its efficiency; notwithstanding that it put the 
teachers to some considerable personal inconvenience, as w^ell as 
making larger claims upon their time than was usual. 

The subjects of instruction which fell to my share were 
arithmetic, drawing, physical geography, and German. I 
generally taught in the middle classes. In a letter to my brother 
I spoke of the impression made upon me by my first lesson to 
a class of thirty or forty boys ranging from nine to eleven ; it 
seemed as if I had found something I had never known, but 
always longed for, always missed, as if my life had at last dis- 
covered its native element. I felt as happy as the fish in the 
water, the bird in the air. 

But before I pursue this side of the development of my life I 
must touch upon another which was far more important to the 
evolution of my character as man, as teacher, and as educa- 
tionist, and which, indeed, soon absorbed the first within itself. 

Not long after my old friend, to meet with whom I had come 
to Frankfurt, had introduced me to Gruner, he went back himself 
to his work as private tutor. Afterwards he heard of a family (in 
Frankfurt) desiring a private tutor for the sons. Since he could 
not introduce me personally to this family he did so by letter,, 
and several weeks before my journey to Yverdon he had, in fact, 
written to them about me in very kindly terms. It was for three 
sons principally that instruction and education were required. 
They came to see me, and after they had gone their personal 
peculiarities and their previous teaching and training, with the 
results, were fully described to me, and I was then consulted as to 
their future education. Now to education as an object* I had 
in truth never yet given a thought, and the question threw me into 
great perplexity. Nevertheless it required an answer, and more- 
over a precise answer. 

In the life and circumstances of these lads I discovered frequent 
similarities with my own boyhood, which sprang to my memory 
as I listened. I could therefore answer the questions which were 

* That is, the education of other minds than his own j something beyond 
mere school-teaching. 



Autobiography of FroebeL 59 

put to me out of the development and educational experiences of 
my own life ; and my reply, torn as it was from actual life, keenly 
felt and vigorously expressed, bore upon it the stamp of truth. 
It was satisfactory to the parents ; and education — development, 
which hitherto had been subjective alone for me — that is, as 
self-development — now took an objective form, a change which 
was distinctly painful to me. Long, long it was before I could 
bring this business of education into a form expressible bywords. 
I only knew education, and I could only educate, through direct 
personal association. This, then, I cultivated to the best of my 
power, following the path whither my vocation and my life now 
called me. 

To say truth, I had a silent inward reluctance towards private 
tutorship. I felt the constant interruptions and the piece-meal 
nature of the work inseparable from the conditions of the case, 
and hence I suspected that it might want vitality ; but the 
trusting indulgence with which I was met, and especially the 
clear, bright, friendly glance which greeted me from the two 
younger lads, decided me to undertake to give the boys lessons 
for two hours a day, and to share their walks. The actual 
teaching was to be in arithmetic and German. The first was soon 
arranged. I simply followed Pestalozzi's course. But as to the 
language I encountered great difficulties. I began by teaching it 
from the regular school-books then used, and indeed still in use. 
I prepared myself to the best of my ability for each lesson, and 
worked up whatever I felt myself ignorant of in the most careful 
and diligent way. But the mode of teaching employed in these 
books frustrated my efforts. I could neither get on myself nor 
get my pupils on with it. So I began to take for my method 
Pestalozzi's " Mothers' Book." In this way we went on much 
better, but still I was not satisfied ; and, indeed, I may say that 
for a very long time no system of instruction in German did 
satisfy me. 

In arithmetic, by using the " Tables of Units "* in Pestalozzi's 



* Einertabelle ; tables or formulas extending to units only ; a system em- 
bodied to a large extent in Sonnenschein's '* ABC of Arithmetic," for teaching 
just the first elements of the art. 



v^O Autobiography of Froebel. 



pamphlet, I arrived at the same results which I had seen in 
Switzeriand. Very often my pupils had the answer ready when 
the last word of the question had scarcely been spoken. Yet I 
presently found out some defects in this method of teaching, of 
which I shall speak later on.* 

When we were out walking together, I endeavoured to my 
utmost to penetrate into the lives of the children, and so to influ- 
ence them for good. I lived my own early life over again, but in 
a happier way, for it now lay clear and intelligible before me in 
its special as well as its general characteristics. 

All my thoughts and work were now directed to the subject of 
the culture and education of man. This period of my life became 
full of zeal, of active development, of advancing culture, and, in 
consequence, of happiness. And my life in the Model School 
also, with my boys and with my excellent colleagues, unusually 
clever men, was very elevating and encouraging. 

Owing to the position and surroundings of the school buildings, 
which, though not apparently extensive as seen from the street, 
contained a considerable courtyard and a spacious garden, the 
scholars enjoyed perfect freedom of exercise, and could play just 
as they liked in courtyard or garden ; with the result, moreover, 
of thereby affording a most important opportunity to the various 
teachers of becoming really intimate with the characters of the 
boys they taught. And there grew up out of all this a voluntary 
resolution on the part of the teachers that every teacher should 
take his boys for a walk once a week. Each adopted the method 
he liked best ; some preferred to occupy the time of the walk over 
a permanent subject; others preferred leaving the subject to chance. 
I usually occupied my class with botanising ; and also as geo- 
graphical master, I turned these occasions to profit by leading on 
my boys to think for themselves and to apprehend the relations of 
various parts of the earth's surface : on these and other percep- 
tions gained in this way I based my instruction in physiography, 
making them my point of departure. 

The town was at once my starting-place and my centre. From 

* Like other matters, this, too, has been left undone, as far as the present 
(unfinished) letter is concerned. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 6l 



it I extended our observations to the right and to the left, on this 
side and on that. I took the river Main as a base line, just as it 
lay ; or I used the line of hills or the distant mountains. I settled 
firmly the direction of the four quarters of the compass. In every- 
thing I followed the leading of Nature herself, and with the data so 
obtained 1 worked out a representation of the place from direct 
observation, and on a reduced scale, in some level spot of ground 
or sandy tract carefully chosen for the purpose. When my repre- 
sentation (or map) was thoroughly understood and well impressed 
on every one's mind, then we reconstructed it in school on a 
black board placed horizontally. The map was first sketched 
by teachers and pupils between them, and then each pupil had 
to do it by himself as an exercise. These representations of the 
earth's surface of ours had a round contour, resembling the 
circular outline of the visible horizon. 

At the next public examination of the school, I was fortunate 
enough, although this first attempt was full of imperfections, to 
win the unanimous approval of the parents present ; and not only 
that, but the especial commendation of my superiors. Every one 
said, " That is how physiography* should be taught. A boy must 
first learn all about his home before he goes further afield." My 
boys were as well acquainted with the surroundings of the town 
as with their own rooms at home ; and gave rapid and striking 
answers as to all the natural peculiarities of the neighbourhood. 
This course v;as the fountain-head of the teaching method which 
I afterwards thoroughly worked out, and which has now been in 
use for many years. 

In arithmetic I did not take the lower, but the middle classes ; 
and here also my teaching received cheering encomiums. 

In drawing I also taught the middle classes. My method in 
this subject was to work at the thorough comprehension and the 
representation of planes and solids in outline, rising from the 
simplest forms to complex combinations. I not only had the 
gratification of obtaining good results, which thoroughly satisfied 
^hose who tested them, but also of seeing my pupils work with 
pleasure, with ardour, and with individuality. 

* Erdkunde. 



62 Autobiography of Frocbcl. 



In the girls' school I had to teach orthography* in one of the 
elementary classes. This lesson, ordinarily standing by itself, 
disconnected with anything, I based upon correct pronunciation. t 
The teaching was imperfect, certainly ; but it nevertheless gained 
an unmistakable charm for both teacher and pupils ; and, finally^ 
its results were very satisfactory. 

In one of the other classes of the girls' school I taught 
preparatory drawing. I took this by combinations of single lines ; 
but the method was wanting in a logically necessary connection, 
so that it did not satisfy me. I cannot remember whether the 
results of this teaching were brought to the test or not. 

Such was the outcome of my first attempts as a teacher. The 
kind indulgence and approval granted to me, more because of my 
good intentions and the fire of my zeal than for my actual per- 
formance, spurred me on to plunge deeper into the inquiry 
as to the nature of true teaching. But the whole system of a 
large school must have its settled form, with its previously- 
appointed teachihg-course arranged as to times and subjects ; and 
everything must fit in like a piece of clockwork. My system, on 
the other hand, called only for ready senses and awakened intellect. 
Set forms could only tolerate this view of education so far as it 
served to enliven and quicken them. But I have unfortunately 
again and again observed during my career, that even the most 
active life, if its activity and its vitality be not properly understood 
and urged ever onward, easily stiffens into bony rigidity. Enough, 
my mind, now fully awakened, could not suffer these set forms, 
necessary though they were ; and I felt that I must seek out some 
position in which my nature could unfold itself freely accord- 
ing to the needs of the development of my life and of my 
mind. 

This longing endeavour of life and mind, which could not 
submit to the fetters of external limitations, may have been the 
more exaggerated at the time by my becoming acquainted with 
Arndt's " Fragments on Human Culture,":}: which I had purchased. 
This book satisfied at once my character, my resolves, and my 



* Recht schreihen. f Recht sprexhen, 

X One of Arndt's pamphlets, then quite new. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 63 

aspirations ; and what hitherto lay isolated within me was brought 
into ordered connection through its pages, while ideas which 
possessed me without my perceiving them took definite form and 
expression as the book brought them to light. Indeed, I thought 
then that Arndt's book was the bible of education. 

In those days I spoke of my life and my aims in the following 
words : " I desire to educate men whose feet shall stand on 
God's earth, rooted fast in Nature, while their head towers up to 
heaven, and reads its secrets with steady gaze, whose heart shall 
embrace both earth and heaven, shall enjoy the life of earth and 
nature with all its wealth of forms, and at the same time shall 
recognise the purity and peace of heaven, that unites in its love 
God's earth with God's heaven." In these phrases I now see my 
former life and aims vividly brought before me as in a picture. 

Little by little a desire gained strength within me to free 
myself from my engagement at the Model School, to which I had 
bound myself as teacher for at least three years. The headmaster 
(Gruner), whom I have already named, was sufficiently a student 
of men to have perceived that so excitable a man as I could never 
work harmoniously in such an institution as that which he 
directed ; so I was released from my engagement, under the 
condition that I should provide a suitable successor. Fate was 
propitious to me once more. I found a young private tutor with 
whom I had long been in friendly correspondence, and who had 
all those qualities which were lacking in me. He was not only 
thoroughly proficient in the grammar of his mother tongue 
(German), but also in the grammar of the classical tongues ; and, 
if I am not mistaken, in French also. He had a knowledge of 
geography far beyond anything I could boast, was acquainted with 
history, knew arithmetic, possessed some familiarity with botany, 
— much greater, indeed, than I suspected. And what was worth 
more than all this, he was full of vigour in mind, heart, and life. 
Therefore the school was every way the gainer by my departure, 
so greatly the gainer indeed, that from that time no further change 
has been necessary. That same teacher still lives and works 
in that same post.* 

* 1827. 



^4 Autobiography of FroebeL 

Before I begin a new chapter of my career, there are yet a few 
things which need mention. 

To know French was at that time the order of the day, and not 
to know it stamped a man at once as of a very low degree 
of culture. To acquire a knowledge of French, therefore, became 
one of my chief aims at the moment. It was my good fortune 
to obtain instruction from an unrivalled teacher of French, M. 
Perrault, a Frenchman by birth, who still, even though an old 
man, diligently worked at the study of his mother tongue, and 
who at the same time wrote and spoke German with elegance. 
I pursued the study with ardour, taking two lessons a day, 
because I desired to reach a certain proficiency by a given time. 
Slow, however, were my steps, for I was far from having a 
sufficient knowledge of my own tongue whereon to build a bridge 
that might carry me into French. I never could properly acquire 
what I did not fully understand in such a way that it had a 
living meaning for me ; and so from all the genuine zeal and 
considerable cost which I spent over this study I gained by no 
means a corresponding result ; but I did learn a good deal, much 
more even than I then knew how to turn to account. My teacher 
cast on one side all the usual grammatical difficulties of French 
study, he aimed at imparting the language as a living thing. But 
I with my ignorance of language could not completely follow this 
free method of teaching ; and yet, nevertheless, I felt that the 
teacher had fully grasped the meaning and the method of his 
work, and I always enjoyed the lessons on this account. He was 
especially successful in accustoming my ear to the French 
pronunciation, always separating and reducing it to its simple 
sounds and tones, and never merely saying " this is pronounced 
like the German p, or b, or a, or o," etc. The best thing resulting 
from this course of study was the complete exposure of my 
ignorance of German grammar. I must do myself the justice 
to say that I had given myself extraordinary trouble over the 
works of the most celebrated German grammarians, trying to 
bring life and interconnection or even a logical consequence into 
German grammar ; but I only confused myself the worse thereby. 
One man said one thing, another quite the reverse ; and not one 
of all of them, as far as T could see, had educed his theories from 



Autobiography of Froebel. 65 



the life and nature of the speech itself. I turned away a second 
time, quite disheartened, from the German grammarians, and 
once more took my own road. But unfortunately the dry forms 
of grammar had, quite against my own will, stuck like scales over 
my eyes, dimming my perceptions ; I could find no means to rid 
myself of them, and they wrought fatally upon me now and long 
afterwards. The more thoroughly I knew them the more they 
stiffened and crushed me. 

My departure from the school was now arranged, and I could 
let my mind pursue its development free and unshackled. As 
heretofore, so now also, my kindly fate came lovingly to 
my help : I can never speak of it with sufficient thankfulness. 
The three lads to whom I had hitherto given private instruction 
in arithmetic and language now needed a tutor, as their former 
tutor was leaving them. The confidential charge was laid upon 
me, because I of all men best knew their nature and its needs, 
of seeking out some fit teacher and educator for them from 
amongst my acquaintance. As for myself this tutor business lay 
far from my own thoughts, and I therefore looked round me in 
every direction, and with all earnestness, for some one else. 
Amongst others I applied to my eldest brother, telling him my 
views as to the necessary requirements of a true educator. 

My brother wrote back very decidedly and simply, that he 
could not propose any one to me as a teacher and educator who 
would fulfil the requirements I had set forth, and further, he did 
not think I should ever be able to find such a person ; for if one 
should be found possessing ample knowledge and experience of 
life in its external aspects, he would be deficient in a vigorous 
inner life of his own, and in the power to recognise and foster 
it in himself and his pupils ; and, on the other hand, another man 
who might have this power would be deficient in the first-named 
(practical) qualities. I reported the result of my labours. It caused 
much disappointment, indeed it could not be otherwise, because 
the welfare of the children was really sought, in all love and truth, 
and the highest and best obtainable at that day was desired on 
their behalf. The family did not venture to press the post upon 
me personally, knowing my love of freedom and independence. 

So stood matters for several months. At last, moved by my 



66 Autobiography of Froebel. 

earnest affection for the lads, and by my care to deserve the 
confidence with which their mother had entrusted to my hands 
the provision for their education, I endeavoured to look at things 
from the point of view of their parents. This brought me at last 
to the determination to become myself the educator and teacher 
of the lads. After a hard struggle with myself, the hardest and 
most exhausting I had undergone for a long time, I made known 
my decision. It was thankfully received, and understood quite 
in the spirit which had actuated me in forming it. 

I communicated my decision to Gruner, with whom I still kept 
in the friendliest relation. He looked at me with downright 
astonishment, and said, ^'You will lose all hopes of the position 
you have so long sought and waited for." I replied that I should 
protect myself as to my position and my relations with others by 
a very definite written contract. To which the man of experience 
retorted, " Certainly, and everything will be punctually fulfilled, 
so that you cannot say that any one condition of all those you 
stood out so firmly for has failed to be observed ; nevertheless 
you will find you will lose on all points." So spake experienced 
shrewdness, and what had I to set against it ? I spoke of the 
educational necessities and wants of these children. " Good," 
said he, "then you will leave your own educational necessities 
and your own wants out of the question ? " How it mortified 
me, that worldly wisdom should be able to speak thus, and that 
I was unable to controvert it I We talked no more about the 
matter. 

And keen as was the internal conflict over this decision and 
this resolve of mine, equally keen was the external contest which 
I had to wage in entering on my new post. 

There were, namely, two immutable conditions in our agree- 
ment. One was that I should never be compelled to live in 
town with my pupils, and that when I began my duties my 
pupils should be handed over entirely to my care, without any 
restriction ; that they should follow me into the country, and there 
form a restricted and perfectly isolated circle, and that when they 
returned to town life my duties as preceptor should be at an end. 
The time for beginning my new career drew nigh. As the 
stipulated dwelling for myself and my pupils was not yet ready. 



Autobiography of Froebel. ^7 



I was expected to take up my abode, for a few days, with my 
pupils in their town house. But I felt that it was clear that the least 
want of firmness at the outset would endanger my whole educa- 
tional plan ; therefore, I stood firm, and indeed gained my point, 
though at the price of being called headstrong, self-willed, and 
stubborn. That my assumption of my post was attended with a 
sharp contest was a very good and wholesome discipline for me. 
It was the fitting inauguration of a position and a sphere of work 
which was henceforth to be attended, for me, with perpetual and 
never-ending strife. 

But as to this family and all its members, my earnest unbend- 
ing maintenance of my resolve had a most wholesome effect upon 
them even to winning in the end their comprehension and 
approval, though this was later and long after I had quitted the 
situation. It was ten or eleven years afterwards — that is, four 
or five years after my departure— that the mother of these lads 
expressed her entire approval of the adamantine perseverance I 
had exhibited in my convictions. 

I entered my new sphere of educational work in July 1807. I 
was twenty-five years old, as far as years went, but younger by 
several years in regard to the development of my character. I 
neither felt myself so old as 1 was, nor indeed had I any con- 
ception or realisation of my age. I was only conscious of the 
strength and striving of my life, the extent of my mental culture, 
the circumstances of my experience in the world, and especially 
of_what shall I call it ? — the shiftlessness and undeveloped 
state of my culture as far as its helplessness with the external 
world was concerned, of my ignorance of life both as to what it 
really was, and how it showed in its outer aspect. The state of 
my culture was such as only to serve to plunge me into conflict, 
through the contradiction and opposition in which I found myselt 
henceforward with all existing methods ; and consequently the 
whole period of my tutorial career was one continual contest. 

It was a salutary thing for me that this was my appointed lot 
from the very beginning. Now and later on I was therefore able 
to say to myself by way of consolation and encouragement : ^' You 
knew beforehand just how it would be." Still, unpleasantness 
seldom arrives in exactly the manner expected, and the unex- 



68 Autobiography of Froebel. 

pected is always the hardest to bear. Thus it was with me in 
this case ; my situation seemed to contain insurmountable difficul- 
ties. I sought the basis for them in imperfect culture ; and the 
cause of the disconnected nature of the culture I had been able to 
attain, lay, so I perceived, in the interruptions which marred my 
university career. Educator and teacher, however, I had de- 
termined to become and to remain ; and as far as I could know 
my own feelings and my own powers, I must and would work 
out my profession in an independent free fashion of my own, 
founded on the view of man and his nature and relationships 
which had now begun to dawn upon me. Yet every man finds it 
above all things difficult to understand himself, and especially 
hard was it in my own case. I began to think that I must look 
for help outside myself, and seek to acquire from others the 
knowledge and experience I needed. 

And thus there came to me once again the idea of fi.tting myself 
by continuing my university studies to become founder, principal, 
and manager of an educational establishment of my own. But 
the fact was to be considered that I had turned away from the 
educational path on which I had entered. Now, when the im- 
perfection of my training pressed itself upon me, I not only sought 
help from Nature as of old, that school allotted to me by fate, but 
I turned also for assistance to my fellow-men who had divided 
out the whole field of education and teaching into separate depart- 
ments of science, and had added to these the assistance of a rich 
literature. This need of help so troubled and oppressed me, and 
threw my whole nature into such confusion, that I resolved, as 
soon as might be, once more to proceed to one of the universities, 
and necessarily, therefore, to relinquish as speedily as possible 
my occupation as an educator. 

As I always discussed everything important with my brother, 
I wrote to him on this occasion as usual, telling him of my plans and 
of my resolve. But for this time, at least, my nature was able 
to work out its difficulty without his help. I soon came to see 
that I had failed to appreciate my position, and had misunder- 
stood myself ; and, therefore, before I had time to get an answer 
from my brother to my first letter I wrote to him again, telling 
him that my university plans had been given up, and that my 



Autobiography of Froehel. 69 



fixed resolve now was to remain at my post. He rejoiced doubly 
at my decision, because this time he would have been unable to 

agree with m.e.* 

No sooner had I firmly come to my decision than I began to 
apply my thoughts vigorously to the subjects of education and 
instruction. The first thing that absorbed me was the clear con 
viction that to educate properly one must share the life of one's 
pupil. Then came the questions, "What is elementary educa- 
tion ? and of what value are the educational methods advocated 
by Pestalozzi ? Above all, what is the purpose of education ?" 

In answering the question, " What is the purpose of educa- 
tion ? " I relied at that time upon the following observations : 
Man lives in a world of objects, which influence him, and which 
he desires to influence ; therefore he ought to know these objects 
in their nature, in their conditions, and in their relations with 
each other and with mankind. Objects have form, measurement, 

and number. 

By the expression, '* the external world," at this time I meant 
only Nature ; my life was so bound up in natural objects that I 
altogether passed by the productions of man's art or manufacture. 
Therefore for a long time it was an effort to me to regard man's 
handiwork, with Pestalozzi's scholars, Tobler and Hopf, as a 
proper subject for elementary culture, and it broadened my 
inward and outward glance considerably when I was able to look 
upon the world of the works of man as also part of the " external 
world." In this way I sought, to the extent of such powers as 
I consciously possessed at that time, to make clear the meaning 
of all things through man, his relations with himself, and with 
the external world. 

The most pregnant thought which arose in me at this period 
was this : All is unity, all rests in unity, all springs from unity, 
strives for and leads up to unity, and returns to unity at last. 
This Striving in unity and after unity is the cause of the several 
aspects of human life. But between my inner vision and my 
outer perception, presentation, and action was a great gulf fixed. 



* He would have refused to countenance Froebel's throwing up his engage- 
ment. 



yo Autobiography of Froehel. 

Therefore it seemed to me that everything which should or could 
be required for human education and instruction must be 
necessarily conditioned and given, by virtue of the very nature 
of the necessary course of his development, in man's own being, 
and in the relationships amidst which he is set. A man, it 
seemed to me, would be well educated, when he had been trained 
to care for these relationships and to acknowledge them, to master 
them and to survey them. 

I worked hard, severely hard, during this period, but both the 
methods and the aims of education came before me in such an 
incoherent heap, so split up into little fragments, and so entirely 
without any kind of order, that during several years I did not 
make much progress towards my constant purpose of bringing 
all educational methods into an orderly sequence and a living 
unity. As my habitual and therefore characteristic expression 
of my desires then ran, I longed to see, to know, and to show 
forth, all things in inter-connection. 

For my good fortune, however, there came out about that time 
certain educational writings by Seller,* Jean Paul,f and others. 
They supported and elevated me, sometimes by their concurrence 
with my own views, expressed above, sometimes by the very 
contrary. 

The Pestalozzian method I knew, it is true, in its main 
principles, but not as a living force, satisfying the needs of man. 
What especially lay heavy upon me at this time, however, pain- 
fully felt by myself though not apparent to my pupils, was the 
utter absence of any organised connection between the subjects 
of education. Joyful and unfettered work springs from the con- 
ception of all things as one whole, and forms a life and a lifework 



* Georg Friedrich Seller (1733- 1807), a Bavarian by birth, became a highly- 
esteemed clergyman in Coburg, He wrote on religious and moral subjects, 
and those amongst the list of his works, the most likely to be alluded to by 
Froebel, are "A Bible for Teachers," "Methods of Religious Teaching for 
Schools," " Religious Culture for the Young," etc. 

t Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763- 1 825). No doubt the celebrated 
•' Levana," Richter's educational masterpiece, which was published in this 
same year, 1807, is here alluded to. 



Autobiography of Froebel. yi 

in harmony with the constitution of the universe and resting 
firmly upon it. 

That this was the true education I soon felt fervently con- 
vinced, and so my first educational work consisted merely in 
being with my pupils and influencing them by the power of my 
lite and work ; more than this I was not at all in a position to 
give. 

Oh, why is it that man knows so ill and prizes so little the 
blessings that he possesses for the first time ? 

When I now seek to make myself clear as to the proper life 
and work of an educator, my notes of that time rise fresh and 
fair to meet me. I look back from now into that childhood of my 
teacher's life, and learn from it ; just as I look back into the 
childhood of my man's life, and survey that, and learn from that, 
too. Why is all childhood and youth so full of wealth and so 
unconscious of it, and why does it lose it without knowing it only 
to learn what it possessed when it is for ever lost ? Ought this 
always to be so ? Ought it to be so for every child, for every 
youth ? Will not a time come at last, come perhaps soon, when 
the experience, the insight, the knowledge of age, and wisdom 
herself, shall build up a defence, a shelter, a protection for the 
childhood of youth ? Of what use to mankind is the old man's 
experience and the greybeard's wisdom when they sink into the 
grave with their possessors ? 

At first my life and my work with my pupils was confined 
within narrow limits. It consisted in merely living, lounging, and 
strolling in the open air, and going for walks. Although I was dis- 
gusted with the methods of town education, I did not yet venture 
to convert life amidst Nature into an educational course. That 
was taught me by my young pupils themselves ; and as from the 
circumstances of my own culture I eagerly fostered to my utmost 
every budding sense for Nature that Showed itself, there soon 
developed amongst them a life-encompassing, life-giving, and life- 
raising enjoyment of natural objects. !» the following year * this 
way of life was further enhanced by the father giving his sons a 
piece of meadowland for a garden, at the cultivation of which we 

* i8o8. 



72 Autobiography 0/ Froebel, 



accordingly worked in common. The greatest delight of my 
pupils was to make little presents of the produce of their garden 
to their parents and also to me. How their eyes would gleam 
with pleasure when they were fortunate enough to be able to 
accomplish this. Pretty plants and little shrubs from the fields, 
the great garden of God, were transplanted by us to the 
children's gardens, and there carefully tended. Great was the joy, 
especially of the two younger ones, when such a colonist frankly 
enrolled himself amongst the citizens of the state. From this 
time forth my own childhood no longer seemed wasted. I 
acknowledged how entirely different a thing is the cultivation ot 
plants, to one who has watched them and studied them in all the 
stages of their own free development, from what it is to one who 
has always stood aloof from Nature. 

And here already, living cheerfully and joyfully in the bosom 
of Nature with my first pupils, I began to tell myself that the train- 
ing of natural life was closely akin to the training of human life. 
For did not those gifts of flowers and plants express appreciation 
and acknowledgment of the love of parents and teacher ? Were they 
not the outcome of the characteristic lovingness and the enthusias- 
tic thankfulness of childhood ? A child that of its own accord and 
of its own free will seeks out flowers, cares for them, and protects 
them, so that in due time he can weave a garland or make a 
nosegay with them for his parents or his teacher, can never 
become a bad child, a wicked man. Such a child can easily be 
led towards love, towards thankfulness, towards recognition of 
the fatherliness of God, who gives him these gifts and permits 
them to grow that he, as a cheerful giver in his turn, may gladden 
with them the hearts of his parents. 

That time of conflict contained within it an element of special 
and peculiar meaning to myself. It brought before me my past 
life in its many various stages of development ; and especially the 
chief events which had formed and influenced it, with their 
causes and their effects. And it always seemed to me of particular 
importance to go back upon the very earliest occurrences in my 
life. But of the actual matters of fact of my earliest years very 
few traces now remained ; for my mother, who could have kept 
them in her memory for me, and from whom I could now have 



Autobiography of Froebel. 73 



learnt them, had died even before my life had really awakened. 
Amongst the few relics remaining to me was a written address 
from my godmother (the so-called Baptismal Letter), which she had 
sent me immediately after my baptism, according to the Thuringian 
custom of the time, as a sort of portion or dowry for my entrance 
into life. It had come into my possession after the death of 
my father. This letter, of a simple. Christian, tenderly religious, 
womanly soul, expressed in plain and affecting terms the true re- 
lation of the young Christian to that to which by his baptism he 
had become bound. Through these words the inner life of both 
mind and soul, of my boyhood and of my youth, was brought 
before me with all its peace and blessedness ; and I could not 
help seeing how much that I then longed for had since come to 
pass. My soul, upon this thought, regained that original inspirit- 
ing, enlightening, and quickening unity of which I stood so much 
in need. But at the same time all the resolutions of my boyhood 
and youth also rushed back upon me, and made it manifest how 
much more had yet to happen before they, too, were accomplished; 
and with them they brought the memory of those types and ideals 
with which the feeble boyish imagination had sought to strengthen 
itself. But my life had been far too much an inward and strictly 
personal life to have been able, or even to have dared to stand 
forth in any outwardly definite form, or to take any fixed relation 
to other lives, except in matters of feeling and intelligence. 
Indeed the power of manifesting myself properly was a very 
late accomplishment with me, and was, in fact, not gained until 
long after the recommencement of my present educational work.* 
I cannot now remember, during all the time of this educational 
work, that my personal Hfe stood out in any way from the usual 
ordinary existence of men ; but before I can speak with certainty 
upon this point I must procure information as to the circumstances 
of my earlier life. This much is clear, that my life at the time 
I am speaking of has remained in my memory only in its general 
ordinary human aspect. It is true, however, that then, as always 



* This is in 1827. But the expression of his thought remained a difficult 
matter with Froebel to the end of his life, a drawback to which many of his 
friends have borne witness; for instance, Madame von Marenholtz-Bulow. 



74 Autobiography of Froebel. 



in my later life, it was and ever has been very difficult to me to 
separate in thought my inner life from my outer, and to give 
definite form and outward expression to the inner life, especially 
as to religious matters. 

I dare not deny, that although the definite religious forms of 
the Church reached my heart readily both by way of the emotions 
and by sincere conviction, and cleansed and quickened me, yet I 
have always felt great reluctance to speak of these definite religious 
forms with others, particularly with pupils and students. I could 
never make them so clear and living to a simple healthy soul as 
they were to myself. From this I conclude that the naturally 
trained child requires no definite Church forms, because the 
lovingly-fostered, and therefore continuously and powerfully- 
developed human life, as well as the untroubled child-life also, 
is and must be in itself a Christian life. I further conclude that 
a child to whom the deeper truths of life or of religion were 
given in the dogmatic positive forms of Church creeds would im- 
peratively need when a young man to be surrounded by pure and 
manly lives, whereby those rigid creeds might be illuminated and 
quickened into life. Otherwise the child runs great danger of 
casting away his whole higher life along with the dogmatic 
religious forms which he has been unable to assimilate. There, 
indeed, is the most elevated faith to be found, where form and 
life work towards a whole, shed light upon each other, and go 
side by side in a sisterly concord, like the inward* life with the 
outward life, or the special with the universal. 

But I must return from this long digression, and resume the 
account of my life and work as an educator. 

Bodily exercises were as yet unknown to me in their educa- 
tional capacity. I was acquainted only with jumping over a cord 
and with walking on stilts through my own boyish practice 
therein. As they fell into no relation with our common fife, 
neither with the pursuits and thoughts of my pupils nor with my 
own, we regarded them purely as childish games. 

What the year brings to a man in the season when Nature lies 
clear and open before him, that it does not bring to him in the 
season when Nature is more often locked away from his gaze. 
And as the two seasons bring diverse gifts, so do they require 



Autobiography of Froehel. 75 

diverse things in return. In the latter part of the year, when 
man is perforce driven more upon himself, his occupations should 
take on more narrowly personal characteristics. Just as the 
winter's life with nature is more fixed and narrowed, so also is 
the winter's life with men ; therefore, a boy's life at this time 
needs material of some definite fashion, or needs fashionless ma- 
terial which can be shaped into definite fashion. My pupils soon 
came to me, urged by this new necessity. What life requires 
that life provides, wherever life is or has been ; what youth 
requires that youth provides, wherever youth is or has been. And 
what the later man's life requires from a man, or from men in 
general, that also is provided by the boy's life and the youth's life 
when these have been genuinely lived through. The demand of 
my pupils set me upon the following question : " What did you 
do as a boy ? What happened to you to satisfy that need ot 
yours for something to do and to express ? By what, at the same 
period of your life, was this need most fully met, or what did you 
then most desire for this purpose ? " Then there came to me a 
memory from out my earliest boyhood, which yielded me all I 
wanted in my emergency. It was the easy art of impressing 
figures and forms by properly arranged simple strokes on smooth 
paper.* I have often made use of this simple art in my later life, 
and have never found it fail in its object ; and on this occasion, too, 
it faithfully served my pupils and me, for our skill, at first weak 
both on the part of teacher and pupil, grew rapidly greater with 
use. 

From these forms impressed upon paper we rose to making 
forms out of paper itself, and then to producing forms in paste- 
board, and finally in wood. My later experience has taught me 
much more as to the best shapes and materials for the study of 
forms,t of which I shall speak in its proper place. 

I must, however, permit myself to dwell a little upon this 
extremely simple occupation of impressing forms on paper, 
because at the proper age it quite absorbs a boy, and completely 

* Probably done with the point of a knitting needle, etc. The design is 
tjicn. visible on the other side of the paper in an embossed form. 
•(■ This account is dated 1827, it is always necessary to remember. 



76 Autobiography of Froebel. 

fills and contents the demands of his faculties. Why is this ? It 
gives the boy, easily and spontaneously, and yet at the same time 
imperceptibly, precise, clear, and many-sided results due to his own 
creative power. 

Man is compelled not only to recognise Nature in her manifold 
forms and appearances, but also to understand her in the unity of 
her inner working, of her effective force. Therefore he himself 
follows Nature's methods in the course of his own development 
and culture, and in his games he imitates Nature at her work of 
creation. The earliest natural formations, the fixed forms of 
crystals, seem as if driven together by some secret power external 
to themselves ; and the boy in his first games gladly imitates these 
first activities of nature, so that by the one he may learn to com- 
prehend the other. Does not the boy take pleasure in building, 
and what else are the earliest fixed forms of Nature but built-up 
forms ? However, this indication that a higher meaning under- 
lies the occupation and games which children choose out for 
themselves must for the present suffice. And since these spon- 
taneous activities of children have not yet been thoroughly thought 
out from a high point of view, and have not yet been regarded 
from what I might almost call their cosmical and anthropological 
side, we may from day to day expect some philosopher to write a 
comprehensive and important book about them.* From the love, 
the attention, the continued interest and the cheerfulness with 
which these occupations are plied by children other important 
considerations also arise, of quite a different character. 

A boy's game necessarily brings him into some wider or fuller 
relationship, into relationship with some more elevated group of 



* After all, the work was left to Froebel himself to do. These words were 
written in 1827. The " Menschen Erziehung " of Froebel ("Education of 
Man "), which appeared the year before, had also touched upon the subject. 
It was further developed in his " Mutter und Koselieder" ("Mother's Songs 
and Games"), in which his first wife assisted him. That appeared in 1838. 
In the same year was also founded the Sonntags-Blatt {Sunday Journal^, to 
which many essays and articles on this subject were contributed by Froebel. 
The third volume (" Padagogik ") of Dr. Wichard Lange's complete edition of 
Froebel's works is largely made up of these Sonntags-Blatt articles. The whole 
Kindergarten system rests mainly on this higher view of children's play. 



Autobiography of Froehel. yy 

ideas. Is he building a house ? — he builds it so that he may dwell 
in it like grown-up people do, and have just such another cup- 
board, and so forth, as they have, and be able to give people things 
out of it just as they do. And one must always take care of this : 
that the child who receives a present shall not have his nature 
cramped and stunted thereby ; according to the measure of how 
much he receives, so much must he be able to give away. In fact 
this is a necessity for a simple-hearted child. Happy is that little 
one who understands how to satisfy this need of his nature, to 
give by producing various gifts of his own creation ! As a perfect 
child of humanity, a boy ought to desire to enjoy and to bestow to 
the very utmost, for he dimly feels already that he belongs to the 
whole, to the universal, to the comprehensive in Nature, and it is 
as part of this that he lives ; therefore, as such would he accord- 
ingly be considered and so treated. When he has felt this, the 
most important means of development available for a human being 
at this stage has been discovered. With a well-disposed child at 
such a time nothing has any value except as it may serve for a 
common possession, for a bond of union between him and his 
beloved ones. This aspect of the child's character must be care- 
fully noticed by parents and by teachers, and used by them as a 
means of awakening and developing the active and presentative 
side of his nature; wherefore none, not even the simplest gifts 
from a child, should ever be suffered to be neglected. 

To sketch my first attempt as an educator in one phrase, I 
sought with all my powers to give my pupils the best possible 
instruction, and the best possible training and culture, but I was 
unable to fulfil my intentions, to attain my end, in the position 
I then occupied, and with the degree of culture to which I had 
myself attained. 

As soon as this had become fully evident to me, it occurred 
to my mind that nothing else could be so serviceable to me 
as a sojourn for a time with Pestalozzi. I expressed my views 
on this head very decidedly, and accordingly, in the summer of 
1808, it was agreed that I should take my three pupils with me to 
Yverdon. 

So it soon afterwards came about I was teacher and scholar, 
educator and pupil, all at the same time. 



78 Autobiography of Froehel. 

If I were to attempt to put into one sentence all I expected to 
find at Yverdon, I should say it was a vigorous inner life amongst 
the boys and youths, quickening, manifesting itself in all kinds of 
creative activity, satisfying the manysidedness of man, meeting 
all his necessities, and occupying all his powers both mental and 
bodily. Pestalozzi, so I imagined, must be the heart, the life- 
source, the spiritual guide of this life and work ; from his central 
point he must watch over the boy's life in all its bearings, see 
it in all its stages of development, or at all events sympathise 
with it and feel with it, whether as the life of the individual, of 
the family, of the community, of the nation, of mankind at large. 

With such expectations I arrived at Yverdon. There was no 
educational problem whose resolution I did not firmly expect to 
find there. That my soul soon faithfully mirrored the life which 
there flowed around me, my report for 1809 sufficiently shows.* 

To throw m3'^self completely into the midst, into the very 
heart, of Pestalozzi's work, I wished to live in the main buildings 
of the institution, that is to say, in the castle itself.t We would 
have cheerfully shared the lot of the ordinary scholars, but our 
wish could not be granted, some outside jealousies standing in 
the way. However, I soon found a lodging in immediate prox- 
imity to the institution, so that we were able to join the pupils at 
their dinner, their evening meal, and their supper, and to take 
part in the whole courses of their instruction, so far as the 
subjects chosen by us were concerned ; indeed, to share in their 
whole life. I soon saw much that was imperfect ; but, notwith- 
standing, the activity which pressed forth on all sides, the 
vigorous effort, the spiritual endeavour of the life around me,, 
which carried me away with it as it did all other men who 
came within its influence, convinced me that here I should pre- 
sently be able to resolve all my difficulties. As far as regarded 



* A report that Froebel drew up for the Princess Regent of Rudolstadt in 
1809, giving a voluminous account of the theory and practice pursued at 
Yverdon (Wichard's " Froebel," vol. i., p. 154). 

+ The castle of Yverdon, an old feudal stronghold, which Pestalozzi had 
received from the municipality of that town in 1 804, to enable him to establishi 
a school and work out his educational system there. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 79^ 

myself personally, I had nothing more earnest to do for the time 
than to watch that my pupils gained the fullest possible profit 
from this life which was so rich in vigour for both body and 
soul. Accordingly we shared all lessons together ; and I made it 
my special business to reason out with Pestalozzi each branch of 
instruction from its first point of connection with the rest, and 
thus to study it from its very root. 

The forcible, comprehensive, stimulating life stimulated me too, 
and seized upon me with all its comprehensiveness and all its 
force. It is true it could not blind me to many imperfections 
and deficiencies, but these were retrieved by the general tendency 
and endeavour of the whole system ; for this, though containing 
several absolute contradictions, manifest even at that time, yet 
vindicated on a general view its inner connection and hidden 
unity. The powerful, indefinable^ stirring, and uplifting effect 
produced by Pestalozzi when he spoke, set one's soul on fire for 
a higher, nobler life, although he had not made clear or sure the 
exact way towards it, nor indicated the means whereby to attain 
it. Thus did the power and manysidedness of the educational 
effort make up for deficiency in unity and comprehensiveness ;: 
and the love, the warmth, the stir of the whole, the human kind- 
ness and benevolence of it replaced the want of clearness, depth, 
thoroughness, extent, perseverance, and steadiness. In this way 
each separate branch of education was in such a condition as to 
powerfully interest, but never wholly to content the observer, 
since it prepared only further division and separation and did not 
tend towards unity. . 

The want of unity of effort, both as to means and aims, I soon 
felt ; I recognised it in the inadequacy, the incompleteness, and 
the unlikeness of the ways in which the various subjects were 
taught. Therefore I endeavoured to gain the greatest possible 
insight into all, and became a scholar in all subjects — arithmetic,, 
form, singing, reading, drawing, language, physical geography, 
the natural sciences, etc. 

I could see something higher, and I believed in a higher 
efficiency, a closer unity of the whole educational system ; in 
truth, I believed I saw this clearer, though not with greater con- 
viction, than Pestalozzi himself. I held that land happy, that. 



go Autobiography of Froehel 



man fortunate, by whom the means of true education should be 
developed and applied, and the wish to see this benefit conferred 
upon my country naturally sprang from the love I bore my native 
land."^' The result was the written record of 1809 already re- 
ferred to. 

Where there is the germ of disunion, where the whole is split 
up, even sometimes into contradictory parts, and where an abso- 
lute reconciling unity is wanting, where what connection there 
may be is derived rather from casual outward ties than from 
inner necessary union, the whole system must of necessity dig its 
own grave, and become its own murderer. Now it was exactly at 
such a time of supreme crisis that I had the good or the evil fortune 
to be at Yverdon. All that was good and all that was bad, all 
that was profitable and all that was unprofitable, all that was 
strong and all that was weak, all that was empty and all that was 
full, all that was selfish and all that was unselfish amongst 
Pestalozzi and his friends, was displayed openly before me. 

I happened to be there precisely at the time of the great Com- 
mission of 1 8 10. Neither Pestalozzi nor his so-called friends, 
neither any individuals nor the whole community, could give me, 
or would give me, what I wanted. In the methods laid down by 
them for teaching boys, for the thorough education of boys as part 
of one great human family, — that is, for their higher instruction, — 
I failed to find that comprehensiveness which is alone sufficient to 
satisfy the human being. Thus it was with natural history, natural 
science, German, and language generally, with history, and above 
all, with religious instruction. Pestalozzi's devotional addresses 
were very vague, and, as experience showed, were only service- 
able to those already in the right way.t I spoke of all these 



* Froebel desired to see in Rudolstadt, or elsewhere in Thuringia (his •* native 
land "), an institution like that of Pestalozzi at Yverdon •, and he sought to 
interest the Princess Regent of Rudolstadt by the full account of Yverdon already 
mentioned. 

f This would scarcely seem probable to those who admire and love Pesta- 
lozzi. But we must remember that religious teaching appeals so intimately to 
individual sympathies that it is quite possible that what was of vital service to 
many others was not of so much use to Froebel, who was, as he frankly admits, 
out of harmony on many points with his noble-hearted teacher. 



Autobiography oj Froebel. 8 1 



things very earnestly and decidedly with Pestalozzi, and at last I 
made up my mind, in 1810, to quit Yverdon along with my 

pupils. 

But before I continue further here, it is my duty to consider my 
life and work from yet another point of view. 

Amongst the various branches of education, the teaching of 
languages struck me with especial force as defective, on account 
of its great imperfection, its capriciousness and lifelessness. The 
search for a satisfactory method for our native language occupied 
me in preference to anything else. I proceeded on the fol- 
lowing basis : — 

Language is an image, a representation of our separate (subject) 
world, and becomes manifest to the (object) world outside our- 
selves principally through combined and ordered sounds. If, 
therefore, I would image forth anything correctly, I must know 
the real nature of the original object. The theme of our imagery 
and representation, the outside world, contains objects, therefore 
I must have a definite form, a definite succession of sounds, a 
definite word to express each object. The objects have qualities, 
therefore our language must contain adjectives expressing these 
qualities. The qualities of objects are fundamental or relative ; 
express what they are, what they possess, and what they 
become. 

Passing now to singing and music, it happened very luckily for 
me that just at this time Nageli and Pfeifer brought out their 
" Treatise on the Construction of a Musical Course according to the 
Principles of Pestalozzi." Nageli's knowledge of music generally, 
and especially of church music, made a powerful impression upon 
me, and brought music and singing before me as a means for human 
culture ; setting the cultivation of music, and especially of singmg, 
in a higher light than 1 had ever conceived possible. Nageli was 
very capable in teaching music and singing, and in representing 
their function as inspiring aids to pure human life ; and although 
nearly twenty years have elapsed since I heard those lessons of 
his, the fire of the love for music which they kindled burns yet, 
active for good, within my breast. And further, I was taught 
and convinced by these two super-excellent music teachers, who 
instructed my pupils, that purely instrumental music, such as 



82 Autobiography of Froebel. 



that of the violin or of the pianoforte, is also in its essence based 
upon and derived from vocal music, though developed through 
the independent discovery of a few simple sound-producing instru- 
ments. Not only have 1 never since left the path thus opened to 
me at its origin, but I have consistently traced it onwards in all 
care and love, and continue to rejoice in the excellent results 
obtained. This course of music-teaching, as extended and applied 
later on, has always enjoyed the approbation of the thoughful and 
experienced amongst music teachers. 

I also studied the boys' play, the whole series of games in 
the open air, and learned to recognise their mighty power to 
awake and to strengthen the intelligence and the soul as well as 
the body. In these games and what was connected with them I 
detected the mainspring of the moral strength which animated the 
pupils and the young people in the institution. The games, as I 
am now fervently assured, formed a mental bath of extraordinary 
strengthening-power ; * and although the sense of the higher sym- 
bolic meaning of games had not yet dawned upon me, I was 
nevertheless able to perceive in each boy genuinely at play a 
moral strength governing both mind and body which won my 
highest esteem. 

Closely akin to the games in their morally strengthening aspect 
were the walks, especially those of the general walking parties, 
more particularly when conducted by Pestalozzi himself These 
walks were by no means always meant to be opportunities for 
drawing close to Nature, but Nature herself, though unsought, 
always drew the walkers close to her. Every contact with her 
elevates, strengthens, purifies. It is from this cause that Nature, 
like noble great-souled men, wins us to her; and whenever school 
or teaching duties gave me respite, my life at this time was always 
passed amidst natural scenes and in communion with Nature. 
From the tops of the high mountains near by I used to rejoice in 
the clear and still sunset, in the pine-forests, the glaciers, the 
mountain meadows, all bathed in rosy light. Such an evening walk 



* That the boys' characters were immersed in an element of strengthening 
and developing games as the body is immersed in the water of a strengthening 
bath, seems to be Froebel's idea. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 83 



came indeed to be an almost irresistible necessity to me after each 
actively-spent day. As I wandered on the sunlit, far-stretching 
hills, or along the still shore of the lake, clear as crystal, smooth 
as a mirror, or in the shady groves, under the tall forest trees, 
my spirit grew full with ideas of the truly god -like nature and 
priceless value of a man's soul, and I gladdened myself with the 
consideration of mankind as the beloved children of God. There 
is no question but that Pestalozzi's general addresses, especially 
those dehvered in the evening, when he used to delight in evoking 
a picture of noble manliness and true love of mankind and de- 
veloping it in all its details, very powerfully contributed towards 
arousing such an inner life as that just described. 

Yet I did not lose myself in empty fancies ; on the contrary, I 
kept my practical work constantly before my eyes. From thinking 
about my dead parents my thoughts would wander back over 
the rest of my family, turning most often to that dear eldest 
brother of mine, who has now not been referred to for some time 
in these pages. He had become the faithful watchful father of 
several children. I shared in his unaffected fatherly cares, and 
my soul was penetrated with the desire that he might be able to 
give his sons such an education as I should feel obliged to point 
out to him as being the best. Already, ever since I was at Frank- 
furt, I had communicated to him my thoughts on education and 
methods of teaching. What now occurred to me out of my new 
knowledge as applicable to his case, I extracted, collected together, 
and classified, so as to be able to impart it to him for his use at 
the first opportunity.^ 

One thing which greatly contributed to the better consideration 
apd elucidation of the Pestalozzian mode of teaching was the pre- 
sence of a large number of young men sent from various govern- 
ments as students to Yverdon. With some of these I was on 
terms of intimacy, and to the exchange of ideas which went on 
amongst us I owe at least as much as to my own observation. 

On the whole I passed a glorious time at Yverdon, elevated in 
tone, and critically decisive for my after life. At its close, how- 
ever, I felt more clearly than ever the deficiency of inner unity 
and 'interdependence, as well as of outward comprehensiveness 
and thoroughness in the teaching there. 



84 Autobiography of Froebel. 



To obtain the means of a satisfactory judgment upon the best 
method of teaching the classical tongues, I took Greek and Latin 
under a young German, who was staying there at that time ; but 
I was constructing a method of my own all the while, by observ- 
ing all the points which seemed valuable, as they occurred in 
actual teaching. But the want of a satisfactory presentation of 
the classical tongues as part of the general means of education and 
culture of mankind, especially when added to the want of a con- 
sideration of natural history as a comprehensive and necessary 
means of education, and above all the uncertain wavering of the 
ground-principles on which the whole education and teaching 
rested at Yverdon, decided me not only to take my pupils back to 
their parents' house, but to abandon altogether my present educa- 
tional work, in order to equip myself, by renewed study at some 
German university, with that due knowledge of natural science 
which now seemed to me quite indispensable for an educator. 

In the year 1810 I returned from Yverdon by Bern, Schaff- 
hausen, and Stuttgart to Frankfurt. 

I should have prepared to go to the university at once, but 
found myself obliged to remain at my post till the July of the 
following year. The piece-meal condition of the methods of 
teaching and of education which surrounded me hung heavy on 
my mind, so that I was extremely glad when at last I was able 
to shake myself free from my position. 

In the beginning of July 181 1 I went to Gottingen. 1 went 
up at once, although it was in the middle of the session, because 
I felt that I should require several months to see my way towards 
harmonising my inward with my outward life, and reconciling my 
thoughts with my actions. And it was in truth several months 
before I gained peace within myself, and before I arrived at that 
unity which was so necessary to me, between my inward and my 
outward life, and at the equally necessary harmony between aim, 
career, and method. 

Mankind as a whole, as one great unity, had now become my 
quickening thought. I kept this conception continually before my 
mind. I sought after proofs of it in my little world within, and 
in the great woild without me; I desired by many a struggle 
to win it, and then to set it worthily forth. And thus I 



Autobiography of Froebel. 85 



was led back to the first appearance of man upon our earth, to 
the land which first saw man, and to the first manifestation 
of mankind, his speech. 

Linguistic studies, the learning of languages, philology, etc., 
now formed the object of my attack. The study of Oriental 
tongues seemed to me the central point, the fountain head, 
whither my search was leading me ; and at once I began upon 
them with Hebrew and Arabic. I had a dim idea of opening up 
a path through them to other Asiatic tongues, particularly those 
of India * and Persia. I was powerfully stimulated and attracted 
by what I had heard about the study of these languages, then in 
its early youth — namely, the acknowledgment of a relationship 
between Persian and German. Greek also attracted me in quite 
a special way on account of its inner fulness, organisation, and 
regularity. My whole time and energy were devoted to the two 
languages I have named. t But I did not get far with Hebrew in 
spite of my genuine zeal and my strict way with myself, because 
between the manner of looking at a language congenial to my 
mind and the manner in which the elementary lesson book pre- 
sented it to me, lay a vast chasm which I could find no means to 
bridge over. In the form in which language was offered to me, I 
could find and see no means of making it a living study ; and 3'^et, 
nevertheless, nothing would have drawn me from my linguistic 
studies had I not been assured by educated men that these 
studies, especially my work on Indian and Persian tongues, were 
in reality quite beside the mark at which I aimed. Hebrew 
also was abandoned ; but, on the other hand, Greek irresistibly 
enthralled me, and nearly all my time and energy were finally 
given to its study, with the help of the best books. 

I was now free, happy, in good mental and bodily health and 
vigour, and I gained peace within myself and without, through 
hard work, interrupted only by an indisposition which kept me to 
my room for a few weeks. After working all day alone, I used to 
walk out late in the evening, so that at least I might receive a 
greeting from the friendly beams of the setting sun. To in- 



* Sanskrit is here probably meant, 
t Hebrew and Arabic. 



S6 Autobiography of Froehel. 

vigorate my spirit as well as my bodily frame I would walk on 
till near midnight in the beautiful neighbourhood which surrounds 
Gottingen. The glittering starry sky harmonised well with my 
thoughts, and a new object which appeared in the heavens at this 
time, aroused my wonder in an especial degree. I knew but 
little of astronomy, and the expected arrival of a large comet* 
was, therefore, quite unknown to me; so that I found out the 
comet for mj-^self, and that was a source of special attraction. 
This object absorbed my contemplation in those silent nights, and 
the thought of the all-embracing, wide-spreading sphere of law^ 
and order above, developed and shaped itself in my mind with 
especial force during my night-wanderings. I often turned back 
home that I might note down in their freshness the results of 
these musings ; and then after a short sleep I rose again to 
pursue my studies. 

In this way the last half of the summer session passed quickly 
away, and Michaelmas arrived. 

The development of my inner life had meanwhile insensibly 
drawn me little by little quite away from the study of languages,, 
and led me towards the deeper-lying unity of natural objects. 
My earlier plan gradually reasserted itself, to study Nature in her 
first forms and elements. But the funds which still remained to 
me were now too small to permit of the longer residence at the 
university which that plan necessitated. As I had nothing at all 
now to depend upon save my own unaided powers, I at first 
thought to gain my object by turning them to some practical 
account, such as literary work. I had already begun to prepare 
for this, when an unexpected legacy changed my whole position. 
Up to now I had had one aunt still living, a sister of my mother's, 
who had spent all the best years of her life in my native village, 
enjoying excellent health and free from care. By her sudden 

* The comet of 1811, one of the most brilliant of the present century, was 
an equal surprise to the most skilled astronomers as to Froebel. Observations 
of its path have led to a belief that it has a period of 300 years ; so that it was 
possibly seen by our ancestors in 151 1, and may be seen by our remote 
descendants in 21 11. The appearance of this comet was synchronous with an 
unusually fine vintage harvest, and " wine of the great Comet year " was long 
held in great esteem. 



Autobiography of Froebel. ^y 

death I obtained, in a manner I had Httle expected, the means 
of pursuing my much-desired studies. This occurrence made a 
very deep impression upon me, because this lady was the sister 
of that uncle of mine whose death had enabled me to travel from 
Gross Milchow to Frankfurt, and so first set me upon my career 
as an educator. And now again the death of a loved one made it 
possible for me to attain higher culture in the service of this 
career. Both brother and sister had loved with the closest affec- 
tion my own mother, dead so far too soon, and this love they had 
extended to her children after her. May these two loving and 
beloved ones who through their death gave me a higher life and a 
higher vocation, live for ever through my work and my career. 

My position was now a very pleasant one, and I felt soothing and 
cheering influences such as had not visited me before. 

In the autumn holidays, too, a friendly home was ready to 
receive me. Besides the country-clergyman brother, who so often 
was a power for good in my life, I had another brother, also older 
than I, who had been living more than ten years as a well- 
established tradesman and citizen in Osterode, amongst the 
Harz Mountains ; head of a quiet, self-contained, happy family, 
and father of some fine children. My previous life and endeavours 
as an educator had already brought me into connection with this 
circle ; for I had not failed whenever I found anything suitable to 
my brother's needs to let him know of it, as he was the conscien- 
tious teacher and educator of his own children. It was in this 
peaceful, active family-circle of an intellectual tradesman's home 
that I passed all the vacation time during which the university 
regulations released me from vigorous work. It could not prove 
otherwise than that such a visit should be of the greatest service 
to me in my general development, and I remember it with thank- 
fulness even yet on that account. 

I return now to my university life. Physics, chemistry, 
mineralogy, and natural history in general, were my principal 
studies. 

The inner law and order embracing all things, and in itself 
conditioned and necessitated, now presented itself to me in such 
clearness that I could see nothing either in nature or in life in 
which it was not made manifest, although varying greatly according 



88 Autobiography oj Froebel. 



to its several manifestations, in complexity and in gradation. Just 
at this time those great discoveries of the French and English 
philosophers became generally known through which the great 
manifold external world was seen to form a comprehensive outer 
unity. And the labours of the German and Swedish philosophers 
to express these essentially conditioned fundamental laws in terms 
of weight and number, so that they might be studied and under- 
stood in their most exact expression, and in their mutual inter- 
change and connection, fitted in exactly with my own longings 
and endeavours. Natural science and natural researches now 
seemed to me, while themselves belonging to a distinct plane of 
vital phenomena, the foundation and cornerstones which served to 
make clear and definite the laws and the progress of the develop- 
ment, the culture, and the education of mankind. 

It was but natural that such studies should totally absorb me, 
occupy my whole energies, and keep me most busily employed. 
I studied chemistry and physics with the greatest possible zeal, 
but the teaching of the latter did not satisfy me so thoroughly as 
that of the former. 

What in the current half-year's term I was regarding rather 
from a theoretical standpoint, I intended in the next half-year to 
study practically as a factor of actual life : hence I passed to 
organic chemistry and geology.* Those laws which I was able 
to observe in Nature I desired to trace also in the life and pro- 
ceedings of man, wherefore I added to my previous studies 
history, politics, and political economy. These practical depart- 
ments of knowledge brought vividly home to me the great truth 
that the most valuable wealth a man can possess lies in a 
cultivated mind, and in its suitable exercise upon matters growing 
out of its own natural conditions. I saw further that wealth 
arose quite as much from vigour of production as from saving by 
economical use ; and that those productions were the most valuable 
of all, which were the outcome and representation of lofty ideas 
or remarkable thoughts ; and finally, that politics itself was in its 
essence but a means of uplifting man from the necessities of 
Nature and of life to the freedom of the spirit and the will. 

* Geognosie. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 89 



While I received much benefit from the lectures on natural 
history at the university, I could not fall in with the views held 
there as to fixed forms— crystallography, mineralogy, and natural 
philosophy. From what I had heard of the natural history 
lectures of Professor Weiss in Berlin, I felt sure that I could 
acquire a correct view of both these subjects from him. And 
also since my means would not allow me to stay even so long as one 
entire session more at Gottingen, whilst on the other hand I might 
hope at Berlin to earn enough by teaching to maintain a longer 
university career there, I came to the conclusion to go to Berlin 
at the beginning of the next winter session to study mineralogy, 
geology, and crystallography under Weiss, as well as to do some 
work at physics and physical laws. 

After a stay of a few weeks with my brother at Osterode, I 
went to Berlin in October 181 2. 

The lectures for which I had so longed really came up to the 
needs of my mind and soul, and awakened in me, more 
fervent than ever, the certainty of the demonstrable inner con- 
nection of the whole cosmical development of the universe. I 
saw also the possibility of man's becoming conscious of this 
absolute unity of the universe, as well as of the diversity of things 
and appearances which is perpetually unfolding itself within that 
unity ; and then, when I had made clear to myself, and brought 
fully home to my consciousness, the view that the infinitely varied 
phenomena in man's life, work, thought, feeling, and position, 
were all summed up in the unity of his personal existence, I felt 
myself able to turn my thoughts once more to educational pro- 
blems. 

To make sure of my power to maintain myself at the university, 
I undertook some teaching at a private school of good reputation.* 
My work here, beyond the sufficient support it afforded me during 
residence, had no positive effect upon the endeavour of my life, 
for I found neither high intelligence, lofty aims, nor unity in the 
course of instruction. 



* The Plamann School, an institution of considerable merit. Plamann was 
a pupil of Pestalozzi. One of the present writers studied crystallography later 
on with a professor who had been a colleague of Froebel's in this same school, 
and who himself was also a pupil of Pestalozzi. 



90 Autobiography of Froebel. 

The fateful year 1813 had now begun. All men grasped 
weapons, and called on one another to fly to arms to defend the 
Fatherland. I, too, had a home, it is true, a birthplace, I might 
say a Motherland, but I could not feel that I had a Fatherland.-^' 
My home sent up no cry to me ; I was no Prussian,t and thus it 
came about that the universal call to arms (in Berlin) affected me, 
in my retired life, but little. It was quite another sentiment 
which drew me to join the ranks of German soldiers ; my 
enthusiasm was possibly small, but my determination was firmly 
fixed as the rocks themselves. 

This sentiment was the consciousness of a pure German 
brotherhood, which I had always honoured in my soul as a lofty 
and sublime ideal ; one which I earnestly desired might make 
itself felt in all its fulness and freedom all over Germany. 

Besides the fidelity with which I clung to my avocation as an 
educator also influenced my action in this matter. Even if I could 
not say truly that I had a Fatherland, I must yet acknowledge 
that every boy, that every child, who might perhaps later on 
come to be educated by me would have a Fatherland, that this 
Fatherland was now requiring defence, and that the child was not 
in a position to share in that defence. It did not seem possible 
to imagine that a young man capable of bearing arms could 
become a teacher of children and boys whose Fatherland he had 
refused to defend with his blood and even with his life if need 
were ; that he who now did not feel ashamed to shrink from 
blows could exist without blushing in after years, or could incite 
his pupils to do something noble, something calling for sacrifice 



* Froebel is here symbolically expressing the longing which pervaded all 
noble spirits at that time for a free and united Germany, for a great Father- 
land. The tender mother's love was symbolised by the ties of home (Mother- 
land), but the father's strength and power (Fatherland) was only then to be 
found in German national life in the one or two large states like Prussia, etc. 
It needed long years and the termination of this period of preparation by two 
great wars, those of 1866 and of 1870, to bind the whole people together, and 
make Germany no longer a "geographical expression " but a mighty nation. 

t In the beginning of this great contest it was Prussia who declared war 
against the common enemy and oppressor, Napoleon. The other German 
powers, for the most part, held aloof. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 91 

and for unselfishness, without exposing himself to their derision 
and contempt. Such was the second main reason which in- 
fluenced me. 

Thirdly, this summons to war seemed to me an expression of 
the general need of the men, the land, and the times amidst which 
I lived, and I felt that it would be altogether unworthy and un- 
manly to stand by without fighting for this general need, and 
without taking my share in warding off the general danger. 

Before these convictions all considerations gave way, even that 
of my bodily constitution, which was far too weakly for such a life. 

As comrades I selected the Liitzowers ; and at Eastertide 181 3 
I arrived at Dresden on my road to join the infantry division of 
Liitzow's corps at Leipzig.* Through the retired nature of my 
self-concentrated life it came about naturally that I, although a 
regularly matriculated student, had held aloof from the other 
students, and had gained no settled acquaintance amongst them ; 
thus, out of all the vigorous comrades whom I met at Dresden, 
many of whom were like myself, Berhn students, I did not find 
one man I knew. I made but few new friends in the army, and 
these few I was fated to encounter on the first day of my entrance 
into my new work of soldiering. Our sergeant at the first 
morning halt after our march out from Dresden, introduced me 
to a comrade from Erfurt as a Thiiringer, and therefore a fellow- 
countryman. This was Langethal ; and casually as our acquaint- 

* The Baron von Llitzow formed his famous volunteer corps in March 181 3. 
His instructions were to harass the enemy by constant skirmishes, and to 
encourage the smaller German states to rise against the tyrant Napoleon. The 
corps became celebrated for swift, dashing exploits in small bodies. Froebel 
seems to have been with the main body, and to have seen little of the more 
active doings of his regiment. Their favourite title was "Liitzow's Wilde 
Verwegene Schaar" (Liitzow's Wild Bold Troop). Amongst the volunteers were 
many distinguished men ; for instance, the poet Korner, whose volume of war 
poetry, much of it written during the campaign, is still a great favourite. One 
of the poems, " Liitzow's Wilde Jagd " (" Liitzow's Wild Chase"), is of world-wide 
fame through the musical setting of the great composer Weber. In June 181 3 
came the armistice of which Froebel presently speaks. During the fresh out- 
break of war after the armistice the corps was cut to pieces. It was reorganised, 
and we find it on the Rhine in December of the same year. It was finally 
dissolved after Napoleon's abdication and exile to Elba, 20th April, and the 
peace of Paris 30th May, 1814. 



92 Autobiography oj Froebel. 

ance thus began, it proved to be a lasting friendship. Our first 
day's march was to Meissen, where we halted. We had enjoyed 
lovely spring weather during our march, and our repose was 
gladdened by a still lovelier evening. I found all the university 
students of the corps, driven by a like impulse, collected together in 
an open place by the shores of Elbe and near a public restaurant ; 
and some old Meissen wine soon served us as a bond of union. 
We sat about twenty strong in a jolly group at a long table, and 
began by welcoming and pledging one another to friendship. It 
was here that Langethal introduced me to a university friend of 
his at Berlin, the young Middendorflf, a divinity student from the 
Mark.* Keeping together in a merry little society till the middle 
of the lovely spring night, we united again next m.orning in a visit 
to the splendid cathedral of Meissen. Thus from the very first 
did we three join fast in a common struggle towards and on 
behalf of the higher life, and even if we have not always remained 
in the like close outward bonds of union, we have from that time 
to this, now near upon fifteen years, never lost our comradeship 
in the inner life and our common endeavour after self-education. 
Both Langethal and Middendorflf had a third friend, named Bauer, 
amongst our comrades of the camp. With him also, as I think, 
I made acquaintance as early as at Meissen, but it was more 
particularly at Havelberg, later on, that Bauer and I struck up 
a friendship together, which has ever since endured. Even when 
we have not been together in outward life, we have always 
remained one in our endeavours after the highest and best. 

* Die Grafschaft Mark. The Mark of Brandenburg (so called as being the 
mark or frontier against Slavic heathendom in that direction during the dark 
ages) is the kernel of the Prussian monarchy. It was in the character of 
Markgraf of Brandenburg, that the HohenzoUern princes were electors of the 
German Empire ; their title as king was due not to Brandenburg, but to the 
dukedom of Prussia in the far east (once the territory of the Teutonic military 
order), which was elevated to the rank of an independent kingdom in 1701. 
The title of the present Emperor of Germany still begins "William, Emperor 
of Germany, King of Prussia, Markgraf of Brandenburg," etc., etc., showing 
the importance attached to this most ancient dignity. The Mark of Branden- 
burg contains Berlin. Middendorflf seems to have been then living in the Mark. 
Froebel cannot have forgotten that by origin Wilhelm Middendorff was a 
Westphalian 



Autobiography of Froebel. 93. 

Bauer closed the narrow circle of my friends amongst our com- 
panions in arms.* 

I remained true to my previous way of life and thought in the 
manner in which I viewed my new soldier life. My main care 
was always to educate myself for the actual calling which at the 
moment I was following ; thus, amongst the first things I took in 
hand was an attempt at finding the inner necessity and connection 
of the various parts of the drill and the military services, in 
which, without any previous acquaintance with military affairs, 
I managed, in consequence of my mathematical and physical 
knowledge, to succeed very fairly and without any great difficulty. 
I was able to protect myself, therefore, against many small 
reprimands, which fell tolerably frequently on those who had 
thought this or that instruction might be lightly passed over as 
too trivial to be attended to. It came about in this way, 
when we were continually drilling, after the cessation of the 
armistice, that the military exercises we performed gave me 
genuine pleasure on account of their regularity, their clearness, 
and the precision of their execution. In probing into their nature 
I could see freedom beneath their recognised necessity. 

During the long sojourn of our corps in Havelberg previously 
alluded to, I strengthened my inner life, so far as the military 
service permitted, by spending all the time I could in the open 



* Of Bauer little further is to be known. He was afterwards professor in 
the Frederick- William Gymnasium (Grammar School) in Berlin, but has no 
further connection with Froebel's career. On the other hand, a few words on 
Langethal and Middendorff seem necessary here. Heinrich Langethal was born 
in Erfurt, September 3rd, 1792. He joined Froebel at Keilhau in 18 1 7. He 
was a faithful colleague of Froebel's there, and at Willisau and Burgdorf, but 
finally left him at the last place, and undertook the management of a girls' 
school at Bern. He afterwards became a minister in Schleusingen, returning 
eventually to Keilhau. One of the present writers saw him there in 1871. 
He was then quite blind, but happy and vigorous, though in his eightieth 
year. He died in 1 883. Wilhelm Middendorff, the closest and truest friend 
Froebel ever had, without whom, indeed, he could not exist, because each 
formed the complement of the other's nature, was born at Brechten, near 
Dortmund, in Westphalia, September 20th, 1 793, and died at Keilhau Novem- 
ber 27th, 1853, a little over a year after his great master. (Froebel had passed, 
away at Marienthal July 21st, 1852.) 



94 Autobiography of Froebel. 

air, in communion with Nature, to a perception of whose loveli- 
ness a perusal of G. Forster's ^' Travels in Rhineland " had 
newly unlocked my senses.^* 

We friends took all opportunities of meeting one another. By- 
and-by we set to work to make this easier by three of us applying 
to be quartered together. 

In the rough, frank life of war, men presented themselves to 
me under various aspects, and so became a special object of my 
thoughts as regards their conduct, and their active work, and 
most of all as to their higher vocation. Man and the education 
of man was the subject which occupied us long and often in our 
walks, and in our open-air life generally. It was particularly 
these discussions which drew me forcibly towards Middendorff, 
the youngest of us. 

I liked well our life of the bivouac, because it made so much 
of history clear to me ; and taught me, too, through our oft- 
continued and severely laborious marches and military manoeuvres, 
the interchanging mutual relations of body and spirit. It showed 
me how little the individual man belongs to himself in war time ; 
he is but an atom in a great whole, and as such alone must he be 
considered. 

Through the chance of our corps being far removed from the 
actual seat of war, we lived our soldier life, at least I did, in a 
sort of dream, notwithstanding the severe exertions caused by our 
military manoeuvres, and we heard of the war only in the same 
sleepy way. Now and then, at Leipzig, at Dalenburg, at Bremen, 

* *' Ansichten vom Nieder Rhein, Flandern, Holland, England, Frankreich 
in April, Mai, und Juni 1790" ("Sketches on the Fower Rhine, Flanders, "etc.). 
Johann Georg Forster (1754 — 1794); the author of this book, accompanied 
his father, the naturalist, in Captain Cook's journey round the world. He 
then settled in Warrington (England) in 1 767 ; taught languages, and trans- 
lated many foreign books into English, etc. He left England in 1 777, and 
served many princes on the Continent as librarian, historiographer, etc., 
amongst others the Czarina Catherine. He was librarian to the Elector of 
Mainz when the French Revolution broke out, and was sent as a deputation 
to Paris by the republicans of that town, who desired union with France. He 
died at Paris in 1794. His prose is considered classical in Germany, having 
the lightness of French and the power of English gained through his large 
knowledge of those literatures. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 95 

at Berlin, we seemed to wake up ; but soon sank back into feeble 
dreaminess again. It was particularly depressing and weakening 
to me never to be able to grasp our position as part of the great 
whole of the campaign, and never to find any satisfactory explana- 
tion of the reason or the aim of our manoeuvres. That was my 
case at least ; others may have seen better and clearer than I. 

I gained one clear benefit from the campaign ; in the course of 
the actual soldier life I became enthusiastic upon the best interests 
of the German land and the German people ; my efforts tended to 
become national in their scope. And in general, so far as my 
fatigues allowed, I kept the sense of my future position always 
before me ; even in the little skirmishes that we had to take part 
in I was able to gather some experiences which I saw would be 
useful to me in my future work. 

Our corps marched through the Mark,* and in the latter part of 
August through Priegnitz, Mecklenburg, the districts of Bremen 
and Hamburg, and Holstein, and in the last days of 1813 we 
reached the Rhine. The peace (May 30th, 1814) prevented us 
from seeing Paris, and we were stationed in the Netherlands till 
the breaking up of the corps. At last, in July 18 14, every one 
who did not care to serve longer had permission to return to his 
home and to his former calling. Upon my entrance into a corps 
of Prussian soldiers I had received, through the influence of some 
good friends, the promise of a post under the Prussian Govern- 
ment — namely, that of assistant at the mineralogical museum of 
Berlin, under Weiss. Thither then, as the next place of my 
destined work, I turned my steps. I desired also to see the 
Rhine and the Main, and my birthplace as well ; so I went by 
Diisseldorf back to Lunen, and thence by Mainz, Frankfurt, and 
Rudolstadt to Berlin. 

Thus I had lived through the whole campaign according to my 
strength, greater or less, in a steady inner struggle towards unity 
and harmony of life, but what of outward significance and worth 
recollection had I received from the soldier's life ? I left the 
army and the warlike career with a total feeling of discontent. 
My inner yearning for unity and harmony, for inward peace, 

* The Mark of Brandenburg. 



96 Autobiography of Froehel. 

was so powerful that it shaped itself unconsciously into 
symbolical form and figure. In a ceaseless, inexplicable, anxious 
state of longing and unrest, I had passed through many pretty 
places and many gardens on my homeward way, without any ot 

them pleasing me. In this mood I reached F , and entered 

a fairly large and handsomely-stocked flower garden. I gazed at 
all the vigorous plants and fresh gay flowers it offered me, but no 
flower took my fancy. As I passed all the many varied beauties 
of the garden in review before my mind, it fell upon me suddenly 
that I missed the lily. I asked the owner of the garden if he had 
no lilies there, and he quietly replied, No ! When 1 expressed 
my surprise, I was answered as quietly as before that hitherto 
no one had missed the lily. It was thus that I came to know what 
I missed and longed for. How could my inner nature have 
expressed itself more beautifully in words ? " Thou art seeking 
silent peacefulness of heart, harmony of life, clear purity of soul^ 
by the symbol of this silent, pure, simple lily." That garden, in 
its beautiful variety, but without a lily, appeared to me as a gay 
life passed through and squandered without unity and harmony. 
Another day I saw many lovely lilies blooming in the garden 
of a house in the country. Great was my joy ; but, alas ! they 
were separated from me by a hedge. Later on I solved this 
symbol also ; and until its solution image and longing remained 
stored in my memor}^ One thing I ought to notice — namely, that 
in the place where I was vainly seeking for lilies in the garden 
a little boy of three years old came up trustfully and stood by my 
side. 

I hastened to the scene of my new duties. How variously the 
different outward circumstances of my life henceforth affected me 
as to the life within, now that this had won for itself once more an 
assured individual form, and how my life again resumed its 
true and highest aspect, I must pass over here, since to develop 
these considerations with all their connections would take me too 
long. 

In the first days of August 1814 I arrived at Berlin, and at 
once received my promised appointment. My duties busied me 
the greater part of the day amongst minerals, dumb witnesses 
to the silent thousand-fold creative energy of Nature, and I had 



Autobiography of Froebel, 97 

to see to their arrangement in a locked, perfectly quiet room. 
While engaged on this work I continually proved to be true what 
had long been a presentiment with me — namely, that even in 
these so-called lifeless stones and fragments of rock, torn from their 
original bed, there lay germs of transforming, developing energy 
and activity. Amidst the diversity of forms around me, I recognised 
under all kinds of various modifications one law of development. 

All the points that in Gottingen I had thought I traced amidst 
outward circumstances, confirmatory of the order of the soul's 
development, came before me here also, in a hundred and 
again a hundred phenomena. What I had recognised in things 
great or noble, or in the life of man, or in the ways of God, 
as serving towards the development of the human race, I found 
I could here recognise also in the smallest of these fixed forms 
which Nature alone had shaped. I saw clearly, as never yet I 
had seen before, that the godlike is not alone in the great ; for the 
godlike is also in the very small, it appears in all its fulness and 
power in the most minute dimensions. And thereafter my rocks 
and crystals served me as a mirror wherein I might descry man- 
kind, and man's development and history. These things began to 
stir powerfully within me ; and what I now vaguely perceived I 
was soon to view more definitely, and to be able to study with 
thoroughness. 

Geology and crystallography not only opened up for me a higher 
circle of knowledge and insight, but also showed me a higher goal 
for my inquiry, my speculation, and my endeavour. Nature and 
man now seemed to me mutually to explain each other, through 
all their numberless various stages of development. Man, as I 
saw, receives from a knowledge of natural objects, even because 
of their immense deep-seated diversity, a foundation for, and a 
guidance towards, a knowledge of himself and of life, and a pre- 
paration for the manifestation of that knowledge. What I thus 
clearly perceived in the simpler natural objects I soon traced in the 
province of living Nature, in plants and growing things, so far as 
thesecame under my observation, and in the animal kingdom as well. 

Soon I became wholly penetrated and absorbed by the thought 
that it must be beyond everything else vital to man's culture and 
development, to the sure attainment of his destiny and fulfilment 

7 



98 Autobiography of Froehel. 

of his vocation, to distinguish these tendencies accurately and 
sharply not only in their separate ascending grades, but also 
throughout the whole career of life. Moreover, I made a resolu- 
tion that for some time I would devote myself to the study of the 
higher methods of teaching, so as to fit myself as a teacher in one 
of the higher centres of education, as, for example, one of the 
universities, if that might be. But it was not long before I found 
a double deficiency, which quickly discouraged me in this design. 
For, firstly, I wanted a fund of specially learned and classical 
culture ; and next, I was generally deficient in the preparatory 
studies necessary for the higher branches of natural science. The 
amount of interest in their work shown by university students 
was, at the same time, not at all serious enough to attract me to 
such a career. 

I soon perceived a double truth : first, that a man must be 
early led towards the knowledge of nature and insight into 
her methods — that is, he must be from the first specially 
trained with this object in view ; and next, I saw that a man, thus 
led through all the due stages of a life-development should in 
order to be quite sure to accomplish in all steadiness, clearness, 
and certainty his aim, his vocation, and his destiny, be guarded 
from the very beginning against a crowd of misconceptions and 
blunders. Therefore I determined to devote myself rather to the 
general subject of the education of man. 

Though the splendid lectures I heard on mineralogy, crystallo- 
graphy, geology, etc., led me to see the uniformity of Nature in 
her working, yet a higher and greater unity lay in my own mind. 
To give an example, it was always most unsatisfactory to me to 
see form developed from a number of various ground-forms. The 
object which now lay before my efforts and my thought was to 
bring out the higher unity underlying external form in such a 
self-evident shape that it should serve as a type or principle 
whence all other forms might be derived. But as I held the laws 
of form to be fixed, not only for crystals, but also just as firmly 
for language, it was more particularly a deep philosophical view 
of language which eventually absorbed my thoughts. Again, 
ideas about language which I had conceived long ago in Switzer- 
land crowded before my mind. It seemed to me that the vowels 



Autobiography of Froebel. 99 

a, Oy u, e, iy a, au, et\ resembled, so to speak, force, spirit, the 
(inner) subject, whilst the consonants symbolised matter, body, 
the (outer) object. But just as in life and in nature all opposites 
are only relatively opposed, and within every circle, every sphere, 
both opposites are found to be contained, so also in language one 
perceives within the sphere of speech-tones the two opposites of 
subject and object. For example, the sound t depicts the absolute 
subject, the centre, and the sound a the absolute material object ; 
the sound e serves for life as such, for existence in general ; and 
o for individual life, for an existence narrowed to itself alone. 

Language, not alone as the material for the expression of 
thought, but also as a type or epitome of all forms and manifesta- 
tions of life, appeared to me to underlie the universal laws of 
expression. In order to learn these laws thoroughly, as exempli- 
fied in the teaching of the classical languages, I now returned 
again to the study of these latter, under the guidance of a clever 
teacher ; and I began to strike out the special path which seemed 
to me absolutely necessary to be followed in their acquisition. 

From this time onwards I gave all my thoughts to methods of 
education, whereto I was also further incited by some keen 
critical lectures on the history of ancient philosophy. These 
again afforded me a clear conviction of the soundness of my views 
of Nature and of the laws of human development. 

Through my work at the dynamical, chemical, and mathematical 
aspects of Nature I came once more upon the consideration of the 
laws of number, particularly as manifested through figures ; and 
this led me to a perfectly fresh general view of the subject — 
namely, that number should be regarded as horizontally related.* 
That way of considering the subject leads one to very simple 
fundamental conceptions of arithmetic, which, when applied in 
practice, prove to be as accurate as they are clear. The connection 

* It is to be regretted that Froebel has not developed this point more fully 
He speaks of " die Betrachtung des Zahlensinnes in horizontaler oder Seiten- 
Richtung," and one would be glad of further deta2s of this view of number. 
We think that the full expression of the thought here shadowed out, is to be 
found in the Kindergarten occupations of mat-weaving, stick-laying, etc., in, 
their arithmetical aspect. Certainly in these occupations, instead of number 
being built up as with bricks, etc., it is laid along horizontally. 



100 Autobiography of Froebel. 

of these (dynamical and arithmetical) phenomena was demonstrably 
apparent to me; since arithmetic may be considered, firstly, as 
the outward expression of the manifestation of force, secondly (in 
its relationship to man), as an example of the laws of human 
thought. 

On all sides, through nature as well as through history, 
through life as well as through science (and as regards the 
latter through pure science as well as through the applied 
branches), I was thus encountered and appealed to by the unity^ 
the simplicity, and the unalterably necessary course, of human 
development and human education. I became impelled by an 
irresistible impulse towards the setting forth of that unity and 
simplicity, with all the force, both of my pen and of my life, 
in the shape of an educational system. I felt that education as 
well as science would gain by what I may call a more human, 
related, affiliated, connected treatment and consideration of the 
subjects of education. 

I was led to this conviction on another ground, as follows : — 
Although my friends Langethal, Middendorff, and Bauer served 
with me all through the war in the same corps, and even in the 
same battalion, we were a great deal apart towards the close of 
the campaign, especially at the time we were quartered in the 
Netherlands, so that I, at all events, at the disbanding of the corps, 
knew not whither the others had gone. It was, therefore, an 
unexpected pleasure when, after a while, I found them all at Berlin 
again. My friends pursued their theological studies with earnest- 
ness, and I my natural science ; therefore, at first we came little 
into contact with one another. 

So passed several months, when suddenly life threw us closer 
together again. This came about through the call to arms in 1815. 
We all enlisted again together as volunteers. On account of our 
previous service, and by royal favour, we were at once promoted 
to officer's rank, and each one was appointed to a regiment. 
However, there was such a throng of volunteers that it was not 
necessary for any State officials to be called upon to leave their 
posts, or for students to interrupt their studies, and we therefore 
received counter-orders commanding us to stay at home. 
Middendorff, who felt sure of his speedy departure for the army. 



Autobiography of Froebel. loi 

preferred not to take lodgings for the short time of his stay in 
Berlin, and as there was room enough in mine for us both, he 
came and stayed with me. Yet we still seemed to draw 
very little closer together at first, because of the diversity of our 
pursuits ; but soon a bond of union wove itself again, which was 
all the stronger on that very account. Langethal and Middendorff 
had endeavoured to secure a sufficiency for their support at the 
university by taking private tutorships in families, making such 
arrangements as that their university studies should not be 
interfered with. In the beginning of their work all seemed simple 
and easy, but they soon came upon difficulties both as regards the 
teaching and the training of the children entrusted to them. As 
our former conversations had so often turned upon these very 
subjects they now came to me to consult me, especially about 
mathematical teaching and arithmetic, and we set apart two hours 
a week, in which I gave them instruction on these matters. From 
this moment our mutual interchange of thought again became 
animated and continuous. 



102 Autobiography of Froebel. 

Here the autobiography breaks off abruptly. Herr Wichard 
Lange had some trouble in deciphering it from Froebel's almost 
unreadable rough draft, and here and there he had even to guess 
at a word or so. Froebel had intended to present this letter to 
the Duke of Meiningen at the close of 1827, when the negotiations 
began to be held about a proposed National Educational Institu- 
tion at Helba, to be maintained by the duke, after the similar 
proposal made to the Prince of Rudolstadt for Quittelsdorf earlier 
in the year had broken down. It is not known whether the pre- 
sent draft was ever finished, properly corrected, and polished into 
permanent form, nor whether it was ever delivered to the duke. 
It is highly probable that we have here all that Froebel accom- 
plished towards it. It may be added that soon after Froebel's 
repeated plans and drafts for the Helba Institution had culminated 
in the final extensive well-known plan of the spring of 1829, the 
whole scheme fell through, from the jealousy of the prince's 
advisers, who feared Froebel's influence too much to allow him 
ever to get a footing amongst them. 

Another fragment of autobiography, going on to a further period 
of his life, occurs in a long letter to the philosopher Krause,* 
dated Keilhau, 24th March, 1828, in reply to an article written by 
Krause five years before (1823) in Oken's journal, the well-known 
/s/s,t in which article Krause had found fault with Froebel's two 
explanatory essays on Keilhau, written in 1822, separately pub- 
lished, and appearing also in the Isis, because Keilhau was there 
put forward as *^an educational institution for all Germany" 
(Allgemeine Deutsche Erziehungs-Anstalt), whereas Krause desired 
it should rather style itself " a German institution for universal 



* Carl Christian Friedrich Kiause, an eminent philosopher, and the most 
learned writer on fi-eemasonry in his day, was born in 178 1, at Eisenberg, in 
Saxony. From 1801 to 1804 he was a professor at Jena, afterwards teaching ia 
Dresden, Gottingen, and Munich, at which latter place he died in 1832. 

f Lorenz Oken, the famous naturalist and man of science, was born at 
Rohlsbach, in Swabia, 1st August, 1779. (His real name was Ockenfuss.) In 
1812 Oken was appointed ordinary professor of natural history at Jena, and in 
1 81 6 he founded his celebrated journal, the Isis^ devoted chiefly to science^ 
but also admitting comments on political matters. The latter having given 



Autobiography of FroebeL 103 



culture " (Deutsche Anstalt far Allgemeine menschliche Bildung). 
The rapid growth of Keilhau gave Froebel at the time no leisure for 
controversy. In 1827 began the cruel persecutions which eventually 
compelled him to leave Keilhau. Now whenever Froebel was 
under the pressure of outward difficulty, he always sought for 
help from within, and from his inward contemplation derived 
new courage and new strength to face his troubles. Out of such 
musings in the present time of adversity the long-awaited reply 
to Krause at length emerged. The disputative part, interesting 
in itself, does not here concern us. We pass at once to the brief 
sketch of his life contained in later parts of the letter, omitting 
what is not autobiographical. The earlier of these passages 
relate more succinctly the events of the same period already more 
fully described in the letter to the Duke of Meiningen ; but we 
think it better to print the passages in full, in spite of their being 
to a great extent a repetition of what has gone before. Certain 
differences, however, will be found not unworthy of notice. 

The Krause letter succeeded the other and more important 
letter (to the Duke of Meiningen) by some few months. Its 
immediate outcome was a warm friendship between Krause and 
Froebel ; the latter, with Middendorff as his companion, journey- 
ing to Gettingen to make the philosopher's personal acquaintance, 
in the autumn of 1828. Long discussions on education took place 
at this interesting meeting, as we know from Leonhardi, Krause's 
pupil Krause made Froebel acquainted with the works of 
Comenius, amongst other things, and introduced him to the whole 
learned society of Gottingen, where he made a great, if a 
somewhat peculiar, impression. 



offence to the Court of Weimar, Oken was called upon either to resign 
his professorship or suppress the /./.. He chose the former alternative sent 
in his resignation, transferred the pubHcation of the Ists to Rudolstadt, and 
remained at Jena as a private teacher of science. In 1821 he broached in the 
Jsts the idea of an annual gathering of German savants, and it was earned out 
successfully at Leipzig in the following year. To Oken, therefore, may be 
indirectly ascribed the genesis of the annual scientific gatherings common on 
the Continent, as well as of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, which at the outset was avowedly organised after his model. He died 
1111851. 



104 Autobiography of Froebel. 



PART OF FROEBEL's LETTER TO KRAUSE, DATED KEILHAU, 
24TH MARCH, 1828. 

. . . You have enjoyed, without doubt, unusual good fortune 
in having pursued the strict path of culture. You have sailed by 
Charybdis without being swallowed up by Scylla.* But my 
lot has been just the reverse. 

As I have already told you in the beginning of this letter, I was 
very early impressed with the contradictions of life in word and 
deed — in fact, almost as soon as I was conscious of anything, 
living as a lonely child in a very narrowed and narrowing circle. 
A spirit of contemplation, of simplicity, and of childlike faith ; a 
stern, sometimes cruel, self-repression ; a carefully-fostered inward 
yearning after knowledge by causes and effects, together with an 
open-air life amidst Nature, especially amidst the world of plants, 
gradually freed my soul from the oppression of these contradic- 
tions. Thus, in my tenth and eleventh years, I came to dream of 
life as a connected whole without contradictions. Everywhere to 
find life, harmony, freedom from contradictions, and so to recog- 
nise with a keener and clearer perception the life-unity after 
which I dimly groped, was the silent longing of my heart, the main- 
spring of my existence. But the way thither through the usual 
school course, all made up of separate patches, considering things 
merely in their outward aspect, and connected by mere arbitrary 
juxtaposition, was too lifeless to attract me ; I could not remem- 
ber things merely put together without inner connection, and so 
it came about that after two of my elder brothers had devoted 
themselves to study, and because my third brother showed great 
capacity for study also, my own education was narrowed ; 



* Those acquainted with the classical mythology will forgive us for noting 
that Charybdis was, and is, a whirlpool on the Sicilian shore of the Straits of 
Messina, face to face with some caverns under the rock of Scylla, on the Italian 
shore, into which the waves rush at high tide with a roar not unlike a dog's 
bark. 



Autobiography of Froebel. I05 



but so much the more closely did a loving, guiding providence 

\.\n(\ mv heart in communion with Nature * 

""n :;Lt trustful association with Nature and my mathemat 

I I- A fnr several years after my confirmation. In the latter 
Tof the toe my duties led me towards the study of natural 

Taws nd thus to2ds the perception of the unity so often longed 

•r; soul and spirit, and now at last gradually becoming clear 

from amidst the outwardly clashing phenomena of Nature.T 
Tt as I could no longer resist the craving for knowledge which 

T felt within me. I thrust on one side all the ordinary school- 
earnilg whic" I utterly failed to appropriate in its customary 

Scrnected state (it was meant only to be '-ned by r^e^^a^"^^ 
,hi« 1 never could recognise as the exclusive condition of a really 

Xrensive culture^of the human mind), and I went up m the 
m Wdle of my eighteenth year to the University of Jena. As I had 
been or tl years past'living completely with Nature and my 
mathematics and dependent upon myself alone for any culture I 
r^h have rrived at, I came to the university much hke a simple 
it.f nature myself. I was at this time peculiarly moved by a 
£"e kLwledgeThad picked up about the solar system including 
pricu"arly a general conception of Kepler's ^^^^^^^f^lZ 
r c of the sDheres appealed to me on the one hand as an 
ileU^r: -^g^orld Jclchng whole, and on tHe ^^^^ ^^ 
unlimited individualisation into separate natural objects. iiy 
owruhure had been hitherto left to myself, and so also now 
I had to select my own studies and to choose my courses o 
Lcturerfor myself' It wasJo^be^xpected*a^^ 

«-ork, and therefore seeraed but an idle lellow i ^^^ 

to ^ less gifted than ^^'^:^^ Z:^^ was set down ^ 
f,^L::tru;." 'ill rjul: i'ffuUy set forth in the Meiningen letter, and 

"I ™: wartime time when he was apprenticed to the forester in Neuhaus 
T ims was necessarily studied mathematics, nature, and the 

in the Thunnger Wald, and necessarily siuu extremely peculiar 

culture of forest trees. Eyewitnesses have desr bed ^^^^^^^^^ exUe y P^^^ ^^ 
in all his ways, even to his dress, which was often fantas ic. 
ligity bLs ;nd great waving feathers in his green hunter s-hat, etc. 



io6 Autobiography of FroebeL 



the professors would produce a singular effect upon me, and so 
they did. 

I chose as my courses natural history, physics, and mathematics, 
but I was little satisfied. I seldom gained what I expected. 
Everywhere I sought for a sound method deriving itself from the 
fundamental principle lying at the root of the subject in hand, and 
afterwards summing up all details into that unity again ; every- 
where I sought for recognition of the quickening interconnection 
of parts, and for the exposition of the inner all-pervading reign of 
law. Only a few lectures made some poor approach to such 
methods, but I found nothing of the sort in those which were most 
important to me, physics and mathematics. Especially repugnant 
to me was the piece-meal patchwork offered to us in geometry, 
always separating and dividing, never uniting and consolidating. 

I was, however, perfectly fascinated with the mathematical 
rules of ^'combination, permutation, and variation," but unhappily 
I could not give much time to their study, which I have regretted 
ever since. Otherwise, what I learned from the lectures was too 
slight for what I wanted, being, unluckily, altogether foreign to 
my nature, and more often a mere getting of rules by heart rather 
than an unfolding of principles. The theoretical and philosophical 
courses on various subjects did not attract me either, something 
about them always kept me at a distance ; and from what I 
heard of them amongst my fellow-students, I could gather that 
here, too, all was presented in an arbitrary fashion, unnaturally 
divided, cut up, so to speak, into lifeless morsels ; so that it was 
useless for my inner life to seek for satisfaction in those regions of 
study. But as I said above, there were some of the lectures which 
fostered my interest in the inner connection of all vital phenomena, 
and even helped me to trace it with some certainty in some few 
restricted circles. 

But my financial position did not permit me to remain long at 
the university; and as my studies were those which fitted the 
student for practical professional life, though they were regarded 
from a higher point of view by myself in the privacy of my 
own thoughts, I had to return to ordinary every-day work, and 
use them as a means to earn my living. Yet, though I lived the 
outward business life to all appearance, it remained ever foreign. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 107 



to my nature ; I carried my own world within me, and it was that 
for which I cared and which I cherished. My observation of life 
(and especially that of my own life, which I pursued with the 
object of self-culture), joined with the love of Nature and with 
mathematics to work creatively upon me ; and they united to fill 
my little mental world with many varied life-forms, and taught 
me at the same time to regard my own existence as one member 
of the great universal life. My plan of culture was very simple : 
it was to seek out the innermost unity connecting the most 
diverse and widely-separated phenomena, whether subjective or 
objective, and whether theoretical or practical, to learn to see the 
spiritual side of their activity, to apprehend their mutual relations 
as facts and forms of Nature, or to express them mathematically ; 
and, on the other hand, to contemplate the natural and mathe- 
matical laws as founded in the innermost depths of my own hfe as 
well as in' the highest unity of the great whole, that is indeed to 
regard them in their unconditioned, uncaused necessity, as " abso- 
lute things-in-themselves." Thus did I continue without ceasing 
to systematise, symbolise, idealise, realise and recognise identities 
and analogies amongst all facts and phenomena, all problems, 
expressions, and formulas which deeply interested me ; and in this 
way life, with all its varied phenomena and activities, became to 
me more and more free from contradictions, more harmonious, 
simple, and clear, and more recognisable as a part of the life 
universal. 

After I had lived for some years the isolated life I have 
described, though I was engaged the whole time in ordinary 
professional pursuits, all at once there broke upon my soul, in 
harmony with the seasons of nature, a springtime such as I had 
not before experienced ; and an unexpected life and life-aim 
budded and blossomed in my breast. All my inner life and life- 
aims had become Farrowed to the circle of self-culture and self- 
education. The outer life, my profession, I carried on as a mere 
means of subsistence, quite apart from my real inner self, and my 
sphere of operation was limited. I was driven perforce from pillar 
to post till at last I had arrived where the Main unites herself with 
the Rhine.* Here there budded and opened to my soul one lovely 

* i.e., Frankfurt. 



io8 Autobiography of Froebel. 

bright spring morning, when I was surrounded by Nature at her 
loveliest and freshest, this thought, as it were by inspiration : — 
That there must exist somewhere some beautifully simple and 
certain way of freeing human life from contradiction, or, as I then 
spake out my thought in words, some means of restoring to man, 
himself, at peace internally ; and that to seek out this way should 
be the vocation of my life. And yet my life, to all appearance, 
my studies and my desires, belonged to my purely external 
vocation,* and to its external citizenlike relations ; and by no 
means to mankind at large, either regarded in itself or in its educa- 
tional needs. Therefore this idea of mine was in such violent 
contrast with my actual life that it utterly surprised me. In 
fact, and perhaps greatly because of this contrast, the idea 
would undoubtedly have been quite forgotten, had not other 
circumstances occurred to revive it. On myself and on my life at 
the time it seemed to have not the slightest effect, and it soon 
passed from my memory. But later on in this same journey ,t as 
I climbed down from the Wartburg, and turned round to look at 
the castle, there rushed upon me once more this thought of 
a higher educational vocation as my proper life-work ; and again, 
being so far removed from my actual external life, it only flashed 
upon me with a momentary effulgence an instant, and then sank. 
This, unconsciously to me, and therefore quite disregarded by me, 
was the real position of my inner life when I arrived at the goal of 
my journey, Frankfurt, from whence my life was so soon to develop 
so largely. My energies at the moment were devoted towards 
attaining some definite professional position for myself.J But in 
proportion as I began to examine my profession more closely in 
its practical aspect, so did it begin to prove insufficient of itself 
to satisfy me as the occupation of my life. Then there came to 
me the definite purpose of living and working at my profession 
rather to use it as a means to win some high benefit for 
mankind. § 

* Architecture, etc., at this time. f From Mecklenburg to Frankfurt. 

\ i.e. , as an architect. 

§ His plan evidently was to use architecture, probably Gothic architecture, as 
a means of culture and elevation for mankind, and not merely to practise it to 
gain money. 



Autobiography of Froebel. I09 



The restlessness of youth, nay, that chance, rather, which has 
always lovingly guided me, threw me unexpectedly into relations 
with a man whose knowledge of mankind, and whose penetrating 
glance into my inner being turned me at our very first interview 
from the profession of an architect to that of a teacher and an 
educator, two spheres of work which had never previously 
occurred to me, still less had appeared to me as the future 
objects of my life.* But the very first time I found myself before 
thirty or forty boys from nine to eleven years old, for that 
was the class allotted to me to teach, I felt thoroughly at home. 
In fact, I perceived that I had at last found my long-missed life 
element; and as I wrote to my brother at the time, I was as well 
pleased as the fish in the water, I was inexpressibly happy. Yet 
here from the very first moment (and what a number of sacrifices 
had to be made, what a wealth of activity was poured out !) I had 
to give information, advice, and decisions on matters which 
hitherto I had not thought it necessary seriously to consider, and 
so also here, in my new position, I soon came to feel myself 
isolated, to stand alone. 

I sought counsel, where I had so often found it. I looked 
within myself and to Nature for help. Here my plan of culture, 
hitherto followed only for my own needs, came opportunely to my 
assistance. When I was consulted by others, I looked to Nature 
for the answer, and let Nature, life, spirit, and law speak for 
themselves through me; then the answer was not merely satis- 
factory. No ! its simple, unhesitating confidence and youthful 
freshness gladdened and quickened the inquirer. 

This was all well enough when universal human interests were 
concerned, but how about matters of instruction ? : could, in 
fact, fairly confess that in many respects I had no title to call 
myself a cultured man, for hitherto all my culture had been 
fragmentary or imaginative. 

Once again I found myself in conflict with my environment ; 
for I could not possibly torture my scholars with what I myself 
had refused to be tortured with— namely, the learning by heart of 
disconnected rules. I was therefore compelled to strike out fresh 
♦ It was in 1805 that Froebel was appointed by Gruner teacher in the Normal 
School at Frankfurt. 



I TO Autohiograpky of Froehel. 

paths for myself; which indeed my post rendered a delightful 
task; because I not only had full liberty accorded me in this 
matter, but was even urged onwards in that direction by my 
duty, since the institution was a model school for the higher 
development of teaching. My past self-culture, self-teaching, and 
self-development, and my study of Nature and of life now stood 
me in good stead. 

But this letter is not intended to contain the whole history of 
the development of my mind ; and I will therefore pass quickly 
forward, just mentioning that from this time for six years on- 
wards, during which I thrice completely changed the conditions 
of my life,* I held most earnestly by this same temper of mind and 
this same endeavour ; and although I still always lived in isolation 
as to my personal inner life, yet I was at many points in full 
contact with the brisk mental effort and activity of that stirring 
time (1805 to 18 10), as regards teaching, philosophy, history, 
politics, and natural science.f 

But the nobler, the more varied, the more animating was the 
life surrounding me, and the more I found all without me, as also 
all within me, striving and tending towards harmony and unity, 
by so much the less could I longer be restrained from seeking 
out this unity, even should it be at the sacrifice of all that was 
dear to me, if need were for that. I was impelled to seek to 
develop this unity all bright and living within my own soul, and 
to contemplate it in definite, clear, and independent form, so 
that finally I might be able to set it forth in my actual life with 
sureness and certainty. 

* I. Teacher in the Model School. 2. Tutor to the sons of Herr von 
Holzhausen near Frankfurt. 3. A resident at Yverdon with Pestalozzi. 

f Froebel was driven to Yverdon by the perusal ot some of Pestalozzi's 
works which Gruner had lent him. He stayed with Pestalozzi for a fort- 
night, and returned with the resolve to study further with the great Swiss 
reformer at some future time. In 1807, he became tutor to Herr von 
Holzhausen's somewhat spoilt boys, demanded to have the entire control 
-of them, and for this object their isolation from their family. The grateful 
parents, with whom Froebel was very warmly intimate, always kept the 
rooms in which he dwelt with his pupils exactly as they were at that time, 
in remembrance of his remarkable success with these boys. Madame von 
Holzhausen had extraordinary influence with Froebel, and he continued in 



Autobiography of Froebel. ill 

After nine years' interval I visited the university a second time; 
first (spring of 1810) at Gottingen, and then a year and a half later 
(autumn of 181 1) at Berlin.* 

I now began to pursue the study of languages. The linguistic 
treasures which recent discoveries had brought us from Asia 
excited my deepest interest wherever I came into contact with them. 

But in general the means of acquiring languages were too life- 
less, too wanting in connection to be of any use to me ; and the 
effort to work them out afresh in my own way, soon led me to a 
renewed study of Nature. Nature held me henceforth so fast that 
for years I was chained uninterruptedly to her study, though truly 
languages went on as a side-study during the time. Yet it was 
not as separate entities that I considered the phenomena I was 
working at ; rather was it as parts of the great whole of natural 
life, and this also I regarded as reposing in one supreme unity 
together with all mankind ; Nature and man, the two opposite 
mutually casting light upon each other and mirroring each other. 

After the German war of the spring of 1813 had interrupted 
my studies at Berlin, and I had made acquaintance with a soldier's 
life, its need, and its habits in Lutzow's corps, I i"eturned in 18 14 
to my studies and to a scientific public post in Berlin. The care, 
the arrangement, and in part the investigation and explanation 
of crystals were the duties of my office. Thus I reached at last 
the central point of my life and life-aim, where productiveness and 
law, life, nature, and mathematics united all of them in the fixed . ^ 
crystalline form, where a world of symbols offered itself to the 



constant correspondence with her. In 1808 Froebel and his pupils went to 
Yverdon, and remained till 18 10. But the philosophic groundwork of 
Pestalozzi's system failed to satisfy him. Pestalozzi's work started from the 
external needs of the poorest people, while Froebel desired to found the 
columns supporting human culture upon theoretically reasoned grounds and 
upon the natural sciences. A remarkable difference existed between the 
characters of the two great men. Pestalozzi was dififident, acknowledged freely 
his mistakes, and sometimes blamed himselt for them bitterly ; Froebel never 
thought himself in the wrong, if anything went amiss always found some 
external cause for the failure, and in self-confidence sometimes reached an 
extravagant pitch. 

* Either Froebel or his editor has made a blunder here. Froebel went to 
'Gottingen in July 181 1 (see p. 84), and to Berlin in October 1812 (see p. 89), 



112 Autobiography of Froehel. 

inner eye of the mind ; for I was appointed assistant to Weiss at 
the mineralogical museum of the Berlin University. * 

For a long time it was my endeavour and my dearest wish 
to devote myself entirely to an academical career, which then 
appeared to me as my true vocation and the only solution of the 
riddle of my life ; but the opportunities I had of observing the 
natural history students of that time, their very slight knowledge 
of their subject, their deficiency of perceptive power, their still 
greater want of the true scientific spirit, warned me back from 
this plan. On the other hand, the need of man for a life worthy 
of his manhood and of his species pressed upon me with all the 
more force, and, therefore, teaching and education again asserted 
themselves vigorously as the chief subjects occupying my thoughts. 
Consequently I was only able to keep my mind contented with 
the duties of my post for two years ; and, meanwhile, the stones 
in my hand and under my eyes turned to living, speaking forms. 
The crystal-world, in symbolic fashion, bare unimpeachable 
witness to me, through its brilliant unvarying shapes, of life 
and of the laws of human life, and spake to me with silent yet 
true and readable speech of the real life of the world of mankind. 

Leaving everything else, sacrificing everything else, t I was 
driven back upon the education of man, driven also to my refuge 
in Nature, wherein as in a mirror I saw reflected the laws of the 
development of being, which laws I was now to turn to account 
for the education of my race. My task was to educate man in 

* At this time, however, the symbols of the inorganic world did not appeal 
to Froebel with the same force as those of the organic world. In a letter to 
Madame von Holzhausen. 31st March, 1831, he writes: ''It is the highest 
privilege of natural forms or of natural life that they contain agreement and 
perfection within themselves as a whole class, while differing and fdled with 
imperfection in particular individuals ; for look at the loveliest blooming fruit- 
tree, the sweetest rose, the purest lily, and your eye can always detect de- 
ficiencies, imperfections, differences in each one, regarded as a single phenomenon, 
a separate bloom ; and, further, the same want of perfection appears also in 
every single petal : on the other hand, wherever mathematical symmetry and 
precise agreement are found, there is dcath^'' 

\ Not a figure of speech altogether ; for Froebel did really decline a pro- 
fessorship of mineralogy which was offered him at this time, in order to set foith 
on his educational career. 



Autobiography of Froebel. - 113 



his true humanity, to educate man in his absolute being, accord- 
ing to the universal laws of all development.* Therefore, leaving 
Berhn, and laying down my office, I began late in the autumn of 
1816 that educational work which, though it still takes its impulse 
from me and exists under my leadership, yet in its deepest nature 
is self-sufficient and self-conditioned. 

Although I was not perhaps then capable of putting my con- 
victions into words, I at once realised this work in my own mind 
as comprehensive and world-embracing in its nature, as an ever- 
lasting work to be evermore performed for the benefit of the 
whole human race ; yet I nevertheless linked it, and for this very 
reason, to my own personal life ; that is, since I had no children 
of my own, I took to me my dear nephews whom I most deeply 
loved, in order through them and with them to work out blessings 
for my home and my native land, for Schwarzburg and Thuringia, 
and so for the whole wide Fatherland itself.t The eternal 



* That is, putting development into a formula — 

Thesis-j-Antithesis 
Synthesis. 
The true synthesis is that springing from the thesis and its opposite, the 
antithesis. Another type of the formula is this— 

Proposition-y-Counter-proposition 

Compromise. 

Understanding by " Compromise " ( Vermittlung) that which results from the 

union of the two opposites, that which forms part of both and which links 

them together. The formula expressed in terms of human life, for example, is-- 

Father-pM other 
Child. 
Philosophic readers acquainted with Hegel and his school will recognise a 
familiar friend in these formulae. 

t Froebel travelled from Berlin to Osterode, and took with him both his 
brother Christian's sons, Ferdinand and Wilhelm, to Griesheim ; there to 
educate them together with the three orphans of his brother Christoph, who 
had died in 1813, of hospital fever, whilst nursing the French soldiers. Of 
the sons of Christian, Ferdinand studied philosophy, and at his death was- 
director of the Orphanage founded by Froebel in Burgdorf; Wilhelm, who 
showed great talent, and was his uncle's favourite nephew, died early through 
the Consequences of an accident, just after receiving his " leaving certificate " 
from the gymnasium of Rudolstadt. 

As regards the sons of Christoph, they were the immediate cause of 
Froebel's going to Griesheim, for their widowed mother sent for her brother-ia- 

8 



114 Autobiography of Froebel. 

principles of development, as I recognised them within me, would 
have it thus and not otherwise. 

Timidly, very timidly, did I venture to call my work by the 
title of " German," or " Universal German " education ; and, 
indeed, I struck that out from one of my manuscripts, although it 
was precisely the name required to start with as it expressed the 
broad nature of my proposed institution. An appeal to the general 
public to become thorough men seemed to me too grandiose, too 
liable to be misunderstood, as, indeed, in the event, it only too truly 
proved ; but to become thorough Germans, so I thought, would 
seem to them something in earnest, something worth the striving 
for, especially after such hard and special trials as had recently 
been endured by the German nation. 

With your penetrating judgment you quarrelled with that term 
** German education ; " but, after all, even the appeal to be made 
thorough Germans proved to be too grandiose and liable to be 
misunderstood. For every one said " German ? Well, I am 

law to consult him as to their education. Julius, the eldest, was well prepared 
in Keilhau for the active life he was afterwards destined to live. He went from 
school to Munich, first, to study the natural sciences ; and while yet at the 
university several publications from his pen were issued by Cotta. Later on 
he took an official post in Weimar, and continued to write from time to time. 
Meanwhile he completed his studies in Jena and Berlin under Karl von Ritter, 
the great authority on cosmography, and under the distinguished naturalist, 
Alexander von Humboldt. In 1833 he became Professor at the Polytechnic 
School in Ziirich ; but his literary avocations eventually drew him to Dresden. 
Here he was chosen Deputy to the National Assembly at Frankfurt in 1848. 
After the dissolution of that Assembly, Julius Froebel, in common with many 
others of the more advanced party, was condemned to death. He escaped to 
Switzerland before arrest, and fled to New York. In after life he was permitted 
to return to Germany, and eventually he was appointed Consul at Smyrna. 

Karl Froebel, the next son, went to Jena also. He then took a tutorship in 
England, and it was at this time (i 831) that his pamphlet, "A Preparation 
for Euclid," appeared. He returned to the Continent to become Director of 
the Public Schools at Zurich. He left Zurich in 1848 for Hamburg, where he 
founded a Lyceum for Young Ladies. Some years later, when this had ceased 
to exist, he went again to England, and eventually founded an excellent school at 
Edinburgh with the aid of his wife ; which, indeed, his wife and he still conduct. 
His daughters show great talent for music, and one of them was a pupil of 
the distinguished pianist, Madame Schumann (widow of the great composer). 



Autobiography of Froehel. 115 

German, and have been so from my birth, just as a mushroom is 
a mushroom ; * what, then, do I want with education to teach me 
to be a thorough German ? " What would these worthy people 
have said, had I asked them to train themselves to become 
thorough men ? Now had I planned my educational institute 
altogether differently, had I offered to train a special class, body- 
servants, footmen or housemaids, shoemakers or tailors, trades- 
men or merchants, soldiers or even noblemen, then should I have 
gained fame and glory for the great usefulness and practical 
nature of my institution, for certain ; and surely all men would 
have hastened to acknowledge it as an important matter, and as a 
thing to be adequately supported by the State. I should have 
been held as the right man in the right place by the State and by 
the world ; and so much the more because as a State-machine I 
should have been engaged in cutting out and modelling other 
State-machines. But I — I only wanted to train up free, thinking, 
independent men ! Now who wants to be, or who cares to suffer 
another to be, a free-thinking, independent man ? If it was folly 
to talk about educating persons as Germans, what was it to talk 
about educating them as men ? The education of Germans was 
felt to be something extraordinary and farfetched ; the education 
of men was a mere shadow, a deceitful image, a blind enthusiasm.f 
From this digression I now return, to continue my attempt at 
making myself known to you, as far as is possible, in a letter ; by 
which I mean my real inner self, as manifested in my endeavours 
and my hopes. 

Permit me, therefore, to go a step nearer towards what lies 
deepest in my soul, at least that of it which is communicable to 
another person. I have started by stating my position from the 
side of knowledge, now let me state it also from another side. 
My experience, especially that gained by repeated residences at 
the university, had taught me beyond a doubt that the method of 
education hitherto in use, especially where it involved learning 
by rote, and where it looked at subjects simply from the outside 



* Or, as we say, A is A. 

t A great deal of Froebel's irony might all too truly be still applied to 
current educational work. 



Ii6 Autobiography of Froebel. 

or historically^ and considered then capable of apprehension by 
mere exercise work, dulled the edge of all high true attainment^ 
of all real mental insight, of all genuine progress in scientific 
culture, of self-contemplation, and thus of all real knowledge, and 
of the acquisition of truth through knowledge. I might almost go 
further, and say that its tendency was towards rendering all 
these w^orthy objects impossible. 

Therefore, I was firmly convinced, as of course I still am, that 
the whole former educational system, even that which had re- 
ceived improvement, ought to be exactly reversed, and regarded 
from a diametrically opposite point of view — namely, that of a 
system of development. I answered those who kept asking what 
it was that I really did want after all, with this sentence : ^* I 
want the exact opposite of what now serves as educational 
method and as teaching-system in general." I was, and am, 
completely convinced, that after this fashion alone genuine know- 
ledge and absolute truth, by right the universal possessions of 
mankind, shall find once again, not alone single students here and 
there, but the vast majority of all our true-hearted young men 
and of our professors spreading far and wide the elements of a 
noble humanised life. To bring this into a practical scheme I 
held to be my highest duty, a duty which I could never evade, 
and one which I could never shake off, since a man cannot shake 
off his own nature. 

Our greatest teachers, even Pestalozzi himself not excepted, 
seemed to me too bare, too empirical,* and arbitrary, and there- 

* Empiricism — that is, a posteriori investigations, based on actual facts and 
not a priori deductions from theories, or general laws, did good service before 
Froebel's time, and will do good service yet, Froebel notwithstanding. In 
Froebel's time the limits Kant so truly set to the human understanding were over- 
stepper^ on every side ; Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were teaching, and the 
latter especially had an overpowering influence upon all science. Every one 
constructed a philosophy of the universe out of his own brain. Krause, the 
recipient of this letter, never attained to very great influence, though had 
he been in Hegel's chair he might perhaps have wielded Hegel's authority, and 
there was for a long time a great likelihood of his appointment. Meanwhile he 
reconstructed the university at Gottingen. Even practical students of Nature, 
such as Oken, did homage to the general tendency which had absorbed all the 
eager spirits of the vanguard of human advancement, amongst them Froebel 



Autobiography of Froebel. iij 



fore not sufficiently scientific in their principles— that is, not 
sufficiently led by the laws of our being ; they seemed to me 
in no wise to recognise the Divine element in science, to feel its 
worth, and to cherish it. Therefore I thought and hoped, with 
the courage and inexperience of youth, that all scientific and 
learned men, that the universities, in one word, would immedi- 
ately recognise the purport of my efforts, and would strive with 
all their might to encourage me by word and deed. 

In this I was egregiously mistaken; nevertheless I am not 
ashamed of the error. But few persons raised their voices for 
me or against me; and, indeed, your article in the his is the 
single sun-ray which really generously warmed and enlightened 
my life and lifework. Enough ! the Universities paid no heed 
to the simple schoolmaster.* As to the "able editors," they, 
in their reviews, thought very differently from me; but why 
should I trouble myself further with remembering their perform- 
ances, which were written simply with the object of degrading 
me and my work ? They never succeeded in shaking my con- 
victions in the least. 



himself We see how firmly set Froebel was against experience-teaching, 
a posteriori work, or, as he calls it, empiricism. The Kantist, Arthur Schopen- 
hauer, was not listened to, and dwelt apart, devourmg his heart m bitter 
silence ; breaking out at last with the dreary creed of Pessimism. 

* Froebel is here hardly fair. How should people know much of him 
as vet > He had at this time written the following works :-(i) " O" the 
Universal German Educational Institute of Rudolstadt" (1822) ; (2) Con- 
tinuation of the Account of the Universal German Educational Institute at 
Keilhau " (1823) ; (3) " Christmas at Keilhau : a Christmas Gift to the Parents 
of the Pupils at Keilhau, to the Friends and the Members of the Institute 
ri824) • (4) "The Menschen Erziehung," the full tide of which was The 
Education of Man: The Art of Education, Instruction, andTeaching, as attempted 
to be realised at the Universal Educational Institute at Keilhau set forth by 
the Originator, Founder, and Principal of the Institute, Friedrich Froebel 
(1826), never completed ^ (5) Family Weekly Journal of Educattonfor 
Self-culture and the Training of Others, edited by Friedrich Fyofbel, Leipzig 
and Keilhau But Froebel, in his unbusiness-like way, published all these 
productions privately. They came out of course under every disadvantage, and 
could only reach the hands of learned persons, and those to whom they were 
really of interest, by the merest chance. Further, Froebel. as has already 
Iwantlyappea edf was but a poor author. His stiff, turgui style makes 



Ii8 Autobiography of Froebel. 

I regard the simple course of development, proceeding from 
analysis to synthesis, which characterises pure reasoned thought, 
as also the natural course of the development of every human 
being. Such a course of development, exactly opposite to the 
path taken by the old-fashioned methods of education, I now see 
mankind about to enter upon ; nay, it has been actually entered 
upon already in a few single cases, though these cases are 
almost unknown and therefore unregarded ; and with this new 
course of development a new period is to begin, a new age for 
all mankind, and therefore in the higher inner sense a new world ; 
a world, perceiving and understanding, perceived and understood ; 
a world of crystal clearness, creating an altogether new life for 
science, and carrying onward therefore the true science, that is, 
the science of being, and all that is founded upon this and con- 
ditioned by this.* 

I may image forth the position of my educational establish- 
ment with regard to the universities, under the figure of family 
life. 

In a healthily constituted famil}' it is the mother who first cares 
for, watches over, and develops the child, teaches him to " refid, 
mark, learn, and inwardly digest," deriving everything she teaches 
from its central unity, and gathering up her teaching into that 
unity again. 

The father receives his son from the hand and the heart of the 



his works in many places most difficult to understand, as the present translators 
have found to their cost, and he was therefore practically unreadable to the 
general public. In his usual self-absorbed fashion, he did not perceive these 
deficiencies of his, nor could he be got to see the folly of private publication. 
Indeed, on the contrary, he dreamed of fabulous sums which one day he was 
to realise by the sale of his works. It is needless to add that the event proved 
very much the reverse. As to criticism, it was particularly the " able editor ' 
Harnisch who pulled to pieces the " Menschen Erziehung " so pitilessly on its 
appearance, and who is probably here referred to. 

* This passage may serve as a sufficient illustration of Froebel's metaphysical 
way of looking at his subject. It is scarcely our habit at the present day to 
regard the science of being (ontology) as a science at all, smce it is utterly 
incapable of verification ; but it is not difficult to trace the important truth 
really held by Froebel even through the somewhat perplexing folds of scholastic 
philosophy in ,which he has clothed it. 



Autobiography of FroeheL Ii9 



mother ; with his soul already full of true active life, of desire 
for the knowledge of causes and effects, for the understanding 
of the whole and its ramifications ; with his mind open to the 
truth and his eyes to the light, and with a perpetually nourished 
yearning for creative activity, able to observe while building up, 
and to recognise while taking apart; such in himself and his sur- 
roundings, always active, creative, full of thought and endeavour, 
does the father receive his son in his home, to train and teach 
him for the wider Hfe outside. Thus should it be with my 
educational institute and the universities; as regards the growth 
and development of man I only desire to take the place of the 
silently working, tenderly cherishing mother. 

The life, the will, the understanding, these three must form the 
common chord or triad of the harmony of human life, now one 
tone, now another, now two of the three, rising powerfully above 
the rest. But where these tones are separate and inharmonious 
there they work to discord, as we see but too clearly in daily 
life :— 

"Wrestling with life and with death, suspended between them we hang." 

In whatever family this chord is from the first set sweetly in 
tune, its pure concords uniting to form the fundamental har- 
mony of existence, there all the hobgobUns of ordinary life, which 
even yet often unite to annoy us, will be driven far away, there 
will jov and peace perpetually inhabit, there will heaven descend 
to earth and earth rise up to heaven ; to a heaven, moreover, 
as full of contentment, as responsive to every yearning of the 
soul as ever the Church has painted. 

But since all true and earnest life must arise from and return 
to the ideal life, to life in itself, so must a school of development, 
which is to lead men, by means of their ordinary life, towards that 
higher life, be itself a true school of religious training in the most 
comprehensive sense of the word. 

Man ought not to be contented with teaching merely directed 
to satisfy his needs as a child of earth, but must demand and 
receive from education a true foundation, a creative, satisfying 
preparation for all the grades of development of nature and the 
world which mankind encounters, and for the everlasting here 



120 Autobiography of Froebel. 

and beyond of each new moment of existence, for the everlasting 
rest, the everlasting activity, the everlasting life in God. 

As, however, it is only as a Christian, be he consciously or 
unconsciously so, baptised or unbaptised, taking the Christian 
name or rejecting it, that he can think and act after this fashion, 
you can see at once the reason why my system of education feels 
itself to be, and in fact claims to be, an education after the true 
spirit, and following the precepts of Jesus Christ. 

Through love, mutual faith, and a common aim towards acquir- 
ing, manifesting, and acting out knowledge, there has grown up 
round me a little company of men bound together by beautiful 
human bonds, the like of which you would with difficulty find 
elsewhere. In your last letter you desired to have some account 
of these friends and members of my household. I will describe 
them for you. 

But if my account is to be anything more than a lifeless list of 
names, and if, though it cannot be the closely-branched tree of life 
which actually exists, it is at least to come as near it as a garland 
or a nosegay to the tree, you must permit me to go back a little 
into my past life ; for out of the self-same spirit, whence arose 
my own endeavours and which gave its direction to my own life, 
arose also the circle of those friends who are now so closely 
united with me. 

The German war of 1813, in which so much seed-corn was 
sowed that perhaps only the smaller part of it has yet sprung 
up, to say nothing of blossoming and fruitage, sowed also the 
seed whence sprang the first beginnings of our association, and 
of our harmonious circle. In April 18 13 Jahn led me and other 
Berlin students to meet my future comrades in arms, Ltitzow's 
" Black Troop ; " we went from Berlin to Dresden, and thence for 
the most part to Leipzig. On this march jahn made me acquainted 
before we reached Meissen with another Berlin student, Heinrich 
Langethal, of Erfurt, as a fellow-countryman of mine ; and 
Langethal introduced me to his friend and fellow-student in 
theology, Middendorff, of Brechten, near Dortmund.* 

A wonderfully lovely spring evening spent together by the 

* See the previous footnote, p. 93. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 12 1 



friendly shores of Elbe, and a visit to the magnificent Cathedral 
of Meissen, brought me nearer to these and other comrades ; but 
it was the pleasant banks of Havel at Havelberg, the charming 
situation of the grand cathedral, the " Rhine Travels " of Georg 
Forster, a common love for nature, and above all a common eager 
yearning for higher culture that bound us three for ever together.* 

The war in all its exhilaration and depression, its privation and 
pleasure, its transient and its permanent aspects, flowed on ; 
sometimes nearer to us, sometimes further away. In August 
181 4 I was released from service, and returned to Berlin, there 
to enter upon the postf at the University Museum, 'which I have 
already mentioned. 

Soon after, quite unexpectedly, I ran against my friends again, 
who had come back to Berlin to finish their studies. After being 
somewhat separated by the nature of our work, they as eagerly 
studying theology as I did natural science, our common need and 
inner aspiration brought us once more together. They had 
taken some private teaching, and were frequently driven to seek 
my counsel and instruction by the difficulties of their new posi- 
tion. When the war broke out afresh in 18 15, Middendorff had 
been living for several months previously with me as room 
companion. Thus had life thrown us closely together, so that I 
could see each one exactly as he was, in all his individuality, with 
his qualities and his deficiencies, with what he could contribute, 
^nd what he would have to receive from others. 

In October 181 6 I left my post, and quitted Berlin, without as 
yet confiding to any one exactly what outward aim I had in view, 
simply saying that I would write and give some account of myself 
as soon as I had found what I set out to seek. In November of 
the same year my dearly loved brother,t the eldest now living, 
whom I made my confidant so far as that was possible, and who 
was at that time a manufacturer at Osterode in the Harz district, 
gave me his two sons to educate. They were his only sons, though 



* These events and situations are fully set forth in the letter to the Duke of 
Meiningen, ante. 
t As mineralogist. 
;j: Christian Ludwig Froebeu 



122 Autobiography of Froehel. 

not his only children ; two boys of six and eight years old 
respectively. With these boys I set out for a village on the Ilm 
called Griesheim, and there I added to my little family, first two, 
then a third, that is, altogether three other nephews, the orphan sons 
of my late dearest brother,* he who had always best sympathised 
with me through life. He had been minister at Griesheim, and 
his widow still lived there. He had died of hospital fever in 
1813, just after the cessation of the war. I reckon, therefore, the 
duration of my present educational work from November i6th, 
1816. 

Already I had written from Osterode to Middendorff at Berlin, 
inviting him and Langethal to join me and help in working out 
a system of life and education worthy of man. It was only 
possible for Middendorff to reach me by April 181 7, and 
Langethal could not arrive until even the following September. 
The latter, however, sent me, by Middendorff, his brother, a boy 
of eleven years old ; t so that I now had six pupils. In June of 
the same year (181 7) family reasons caused me to move from 
Griesheim to this place, Keilhau.lt Next came other pupils also, 
with Langethal's arrival in September. My household was 
growing fast, and yet I had no house of my own. In a way only 
comprehensible to Him Who knows the workings of the mind, I 
managed by November to get the school that I now occupy built 
as a frame-house, but without being in possession of the ground 
it stood on. 

I pass over the space of a year, which was nevertheless so rich 
in experiences of trouble and joy, of times when we were cast 
down, and other times when we were lifted up, that its description 
would easily fill many times the space even of this long letter. 
In June of the following year I became in the most remarkable 
way possessor of the little farm which I still hold, in Keilhau, and 
thus for the first time possessor also of the land upon which the 



* Christoph. 

t This younger Langethal afterwards became a Professor in the University 
of Jena. 

\ The minister's widow lost her widow's privilege of residence at Griesheim 
by the death of her father, and bought a farm at Keilhau. 



Autobiography of Froebel. 123 



schoolhouse had already been erected * As yet there were no 

Other buildings there. .,i r ^u 

In September 1818 I brought to the household, still further 
increased, and now so rich with children and brothers, its house- 
wife in the person of a lady whom a Uke love of Nature and of 
childhood with my own, and a like high and earnest conception 
of education, as the preparation for a life worthy of man, had 
drawn towards me. She was accompanied by a young girl whom 
she had some time before adopted as a daughter, and who now 
came with her to assist her in the duties of the household.t ^ 

We had now a severe struggle for existence for the whole time 
up to 1820. With all our efforts we never could get the school 
house enlarged ; other still more necessary buildings had to be 
erected first, under pressing ne ed for them, j: In the year 1820, 

* Froebel told his sister-in-law that he "desired to be a father to her 
orphaned children." The widow understood this in quite a special and peculiar 
sense whereof Froebel had not the remotest idea. Later on when she came 
to know that Froebel was engaged to another lady, she made over to him 
the Keilhau farm, and herself went to live at Volkstadt. ^ , , 

t This young g rl, the adopted daughter of the first Madame Froebel, was 
named ErnestL! Chrispine, and afterwards married ^^^^f^l^^t^ 
first wife Henrietta Wilhelmine Hoflfmeister, was born at Berlin 20th Septem- 
ber 1780, and was therefore thirty-eight at the time of her marriage She was 
a r^mLkable woman, highly cultured, a pupil of Schleiermacher and of Fich^e 
Before her marriage with Froebel she had been married to an official m the 
War Office, and had been separated from him on account of his misconduct^ 
Middendorff and Langethal knew the family well, and had frequently spoken 
with Froebel about this lady, who was admired and respected by both of them. 
Froebel saw her once in the mineralogical museum at Berlin, and was wonder- 
fully struck by her, especially because of the readiness in -^ick she entered into 
his educational ideas. When afterwards he desired to marry, he wrote to the lady 
and invited her to give up her life to the furtherance of those ideas with which 
she had once shown herself to be so deeply penetrated, and to become his wife. 
She received his proposal favourably, but her father, an old War Office official, 
at first made objections. Eventually she left her comfortable home to plunge 
amidst the privations and hardships of all kinds abundantly co-ec ed ^w^^^^^ 
educational struggles. She soon rose to great ^o^^^ J^^^f J.^^^^^ f ""l^^; 
and was deeply loved and most tenderly treated by Froebel himself. In her 
willingness to make sacrifices and her cheerfulness under privations, she set 
them all an example. She died at Blankenburg in May 1839. 

X The expected dowry was never forthcoming, which made matters harder. 



51 24 Avitobiography of Froebel. 



on Ascension Day, my brother from Osterode, whose two sons 
were already my pupils, came to join me with his whole family 
and all his possessions; urged by his love for his boys, and a wish to 
help in the advancement of my life's purpose. As my brother, 
beyond the two sons I have mentioned, had three daughters, my 
family was increased by five persons through his arrival. * 

The completion of the school-house was now pushed on with 
zeal; but it was 1822 before we got it finished. Our fife from 
this point becomes so complex that it is impossible to do more 
than just mention what applies to the Association formed by 
our still united members. 

In 1823, Middendorffs sister's son Barop, till then a divinity 
student in Halle, visited us; and he was so impressed by the 
whole work that he was irresistibly driven soon afterwards to join 
us in our life-task.f Since 1823, with the exception of such breaks 
as his work in life demanded, he has been uninterruptedly one of 
■our community, sharing in our work. At this moment + he is in 
Berlin, serving his one year with the colours as a volunteer, and 
devoting what time he has to spare, to earnest study, especially 
that of natural science. We hope to have him back with us next 
spring. In the autumn of 1825 Langethal became engaged to my 
wife's adopted daughter, who had come with her from Berlin ; 
and Middendorff became engaged to my brother's eldest daughter. 
Ascension Day 1826 was the wedding-day for both couples. 
Heaven blessed each marriage with a daughter, but took back to 
itself the little one of Langethal. 

Still another faithful colleague must I remember here, Herr 
Carl from Hildburghausen, who has been since New Year's 



* Christian had already assisted his brother at Griesheim, and before that, to 
the utmost of his power. The three daughters were (i) Albertine, born 29th 
December, 1801, afterwards married Middendorff; (2) Emilie, born nth 
July, 1804, married Barop, died iSth August, i860, at Keilhau ; (3) Elise, 
born 5th January, 1814, married Dr. Sieglried Schaffner, one of the Keilhau 
colleagues, later on. 

t Johannes Arnold Barop, Middendorffs nephew, was born at Dortmund, 
29th November, 1802. He afterwards became proprietor and principal of 
Keilhau. 

% March 1828. 



Autobiography of Froebel. ' 1 2 5. 



Day 1825 a member of our Institute, his particular work being 
to teach instrumental music and singing. He lives and works in 
the true spirit of the Institute, and is bound up heart and soul 
with its fortunes.* Of other teachers, who have assisted us in 
the Institute for greater or less time, I need not speak; they 
never properly belonged to our circle. Amongst all the speci- 
ally associated members of our little band, not one breach 
has occurred since the beginning of our work. I would I could 
feel that I had accomplished what I have aimed at in this letter — 
namely, to make you acquainted with the inner de.^j-seated 
common life which really binds together the members composing 
our outwardly united association ; although it has only been 
feasible rather to suggest by implication the internal mental 
phenomena of the external bonds of union than properly to indi- 
cate them and to set them clearly forth. 



* 



* This excellent man was drowned in the Saale while bathing, soon after this 
letter was written. 



126 ' Autobiography of Froehel. 

This ends the autobiographical part of the Krause letter. Here 
and there in the footnotes the present editors, profound admirers of 
the great master, have ventured to criticise frankly the inordinate 
belief in himself which was at once Froebel's strength ,ind his weak- 
ness. On the one hand, his noble and truly gigantic efforts were only 
made possible by his almost fanatical conviction in his principles 
and in his mission. On the other hand, this dogmatic attitude 
made it very difficult to work with him, for persons of any inde- 
pendence of mind. He could scarcely brook discussion, never 
contradiction. This is most characteristically shown by a frag- 
ment of Froebel's dated ist April, 1829, as follows : — 

" I consider my own work and effort as unique in all time, as 
necessary in itself, and as the messenger of reformation for all ages, 
working forwards and backwards, offering and giving to mankind 
all that it needs, and all that it perpetually seeks on every side. 
I have no complaint to make if others think otherwise about it ; I 
can bear with them ;* I can even, if need be, live with them, and 
this I have actually done ; but I can share no life-aim with them, 
they and I have no unity of purpose in life. It is not I, it is they 
who are at fault herein ; I do not separate myself from them, 
they withdraw themselves from me." 

To get a view of Froebel's work from the practical side, so as 
to supplement the account we have received from Froebel himself 
as to the origination and development of the principles upon 
which that work was based, we have selected a sketch by Barop 
entitled " Critical Moments in the Froebel Community ; " written 
for Dr. Lange's edition by Barop (then the principal and proprietor 
-of Keilhau) about the year 1862. 



* He always regarded himself as perfectly tolerant. 



CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE FROEBEL 

COMMUNITY. 




'nDER this heading Barop writes as follows : — 

About 1827 we were in an unusually critical 
position. You know how little means we had 
when we began to create our Institution.* Mid- 
dendorff had sacrificed his entire inheritance from 
his father but the purchase of the ground and the erection 
of necessary buildings called for considerable sums, so that 
Middendorff s addition to the capital had disappeared like drops 
of water falling on a hot stone. My father-in-law, Christian 
Ludwig Froebel, had later on come forward and placed his entire 
fortune unconditionally in the hands of his brother,! but even this 
sacrifice was not sufficient to keep away care and want from the 
door My own father was a man of means, but he was so angry at 
my joining the Froebel community at Keilhau t that he refused me 
any assistance whatever. Mistrust surrounded us on all sides in 
these early years of our work ; open and concealed enmities 
assailed us both from near and far, and sought to embitter our lot 
and to nip our efforts in the bud. None the less for this the 
institution blossomed quick and fair ; but later on, through the 
well-known persecution directed against associations of students, 
it was brought to the verge of ruin, for the spirit of 1815 was 
incarnate within it, and it was this spirit which at the time 
<about 1827) was the object of the extremest irritation.§ It 

♦ Froebel moved from Griesheim to Keilhau in 181 7. 

t U waHn 1828 that Barop formally and definitely joined the Froebel com- 

TThe long turmoil of the Napoleonic >.'ars, the outcome of the French Revo- 
Jon ceas^f in ,815 ; and the minds of the students and the other youths of 
Jie country, set free from this terrible struggle for liberty, turned towards the 



128 Critical Moments in 



would carry me too far were I to attempt to give a complete 
account of these things. At times it really seemed as if the devil 
himself must be let loose against us. The number of our pupils 
sank to five or six, and as the small receipts dwindled more and 
more, so did the burden of debt rise higher and higher till it 
reached a giddy height. Creditors stormed at us from every side, 
urged on by lawyers who imbrued their hands in our misery. 
Froebel would run out at the back door and escape amongst the 
hills whenever dunning creditors appeared. Middendorff, and he 
alone, generally succeeded in quieting them, a feat which might 
seem incredible to all but those who have known the fascination 
of Middendorffs address. Sometimes quite moving scenes 
occurred, full of forbearance, trustfulness, and noble sentiment, on 
the part of workmen who had come to ask us for their money. 
A locksmith, for instance, was strongly advised by his lawyer to 
" bring an action against the scamps," from whom no money was 
to be got, and who were evidently on the point of failure. The 
locksmith indignantly repudiated the insult thus levelled against 
us, and replied shortly that he had rather lose his hard-earned 
money than hold a doubt as to our honourable conduct, and that 
nothing was further from his thoughts than to increase our 
troubles. Ah ! and these troubles were hard to bear, for Midden- 
dorff had already married, and I followed his example. When I 
proposed for my wife, my future father-in-law and mother-in-law * 
said, *' You surely will not remain longer in Keilhau ? " I 
answered, *'Yes! I do intend to remain here. The idea for 
which we live seems to me to be in harmony with the spirit of 
the age, and also of deep importance in itself; and I have no 
doubt but that men will come to believe in us because of our right 
understanding of this idea, in the same way that we ourselves 
believe in the invisible." As a matter of fact, none of us have ever 
swerved one instant from the fullest belief in our educational 
iniGsion, and the most critical dilemma in the times we have 

reformation of their own country. Many associations were formed : perhaps 
here and there wild talk was indulged in. The Government grew alarmed, 
and though the students had invariably acted with perfect legality, all their asso- 
ciations were dispersed and forbidden, 
* Christian Froebel and his wife. 



the Froehel Communily. 129 



passed through has never revealed one single wavering soul in 
this little valley. 

When our distress had risen to its highest pitch, a new and 
unexpected prospect suddenly revealed itself.'^' Several very 
influential friends of ours spoke to the Duke of Meiningen of our 
work. He summoned Froebel to him, and made inquiries as to 
his plans for the future. Froebel laid before him a plan for an 
educational institute,! complete in every particular, which we 
had all worked at in common to draw up, in which not only the 
ordinary '' learned " branches of education but also handicrafts, 
such as carpentering, weaving, bookbinding, tilling the ground 
and so on were used as means of culture. During half the school 
hours studies were to be pursued, and the other half was to be 
occupied by handiwork of one kind or another. This work was 
to give opportunities for direct instruction ; and above all it was 
so planned as to excite in the mind of the child a necessity for 
explanations as well as to gratify his desire for creativeness and 
for practical usefulness. The awakening of this eager desire for 
learning and creative activity, was one of the fundamental thoughts 
of Friedrich Froebel's mind. The object-teaching of Pestalozzi 
seemed to him not to go far enough ; and he was always seeking 
to regard man not only as a receptive being, but a creative, and 
especially as a productive one. We never could work out our ideas 
in Keilhau satisfactorily, because we could not procure efficient 
technical teaching; and before all things we wanted the pupils them- 
selves. But now by the help of the Duke of Meiningen our keenest 
hopes seemed on the point of gratification. The working out of the 
plan spoken of above, led us to many practical constructions in 
which already lay the elements of the future Kindergarten occupa- 
tions. These models are now scattered far and wide, and indeed 
are for the most part lost ; but the written plan has been preserved. 

The Duke of Meiningen was much pleased with Froebel's 
explanations of this plan, and with the complete and open-hearted 

* This was 1827-29. 

t This is the interesting plan of the Public Educational Institution and 
Orphanage in Helba, with which admirers of Froebel are probably already well 
acquainted. It is given in full in Lange's *' Froebel," vol. i., p. 401. 

9 



130 Critical Moments in 



way in which everything was laid before him. A proposition 
was now made that Froebel should receive the estate of Helba 
with thirty acres of land, and a yearly subsidy of 1,000 florins.* 
In passing it may be noticed that Froebel was consulted by the 
duke as to the education of the hereditary prince. Froebel at 
once said outright that no good would be done for the future ruler 
if he were not brought up in the society of other boys. The duke 
came to his opinion, and the prince was actually so taught and 
brought up. 

When Froebel came back from Meiningent the whole com- 
munity was naturally overjoyed ; but their joy did not last very 
long. A man of high station in Meiningen who was accustomed 
to exercise a sort of dictatorship in educational matters, as he 
was the right-hand man of the prince in such things, a man also 
who had earned an honourable place in literature (of which no 
one surely would seek to deprive him), feared much lest the 
elevation of Froebel should injure his own influence. We w^ere 
therefore, all of a sudden, once again assailed with the meanest and 
most detestable charges, to which our unfortunate position at 
Keilhau lent a convenient handle. The duke received secret 
warnings against us. He began to waver, and in a temporising 
way sent again to Froebel, proposing that he should first try a pro- 
visional' establishment of twenty pupils as an experiment. Froebel 
saw the intention in the duke's mind, and was thrown out of 
humour at once ; for when he suspected mistrust he lost all 
hope, and immediately cast from his mind what a few hours 
before had so warmly encouraged him. Therefore Froebel 
at once broke off all negotiations, and set out for Frankfurt, 
to discuss the work at Keilhau with his friends ; since after 
so many troubles he had almost begun to lose faith in him- 
self Here by chance he met the well-known musical composer 
Schnyder, from Wartensee. He told this gentleman of the events 
which had just occurred, talked to him of his plans and of our 
work at Keilhau, and exercised upon him that overpowering 
influence which is the peculiar property of creative minds. 



* Say;^ioo. 
t In 1829. 



the Froehel Commumty. 131 

Schnyder saw the value of his efforts, and begged him to set up 
an educational establishment in his castle on the Wartensee, in 
Switzerland/'^ Froebel hurriedly seized with joy the hand thus 
held out to him, and at once set oif for Wartensee with his 
nephew, my brother-in-law Ferdinand. 

There Friedrich and Ferdinand Froebel had already been living 
and working some little time when I was asked by the rest of the 
community who still remained at Keilhau to go and see for myself 
exactly how they were getting on in Switzerland. With ten 
thalers t in my pocket, and in possession of one old summer coat, 
which I wore, and a threadbare frock-coat, which I carried over , 
my arm, I set off on ** Shanks's mare " t to travel the whole way, 
If I were to go into details as to what I went through on that 
journey, I should probably run the risk of being charged with 
gross exaggeration. Enough, I got to my destination, and when 
1 asked in the neighbourhood about my friends and their doings, 
I learned from every one that there was nothing further to say 
against '• the heretics," than that they were heretics. A few 
peasant children from the neighbourhood had found their way to 
them, but no one came to them from any distance, as had been 
reckoned upon from the first by Froebel as a source of income. 
The ill-will of the clergy, which began to show itself immediately 
the institution was founded, and which became stronger as the 
footing of our friends grew firmer, was able to gather to itself a 
following sufficient to check any quick growth of our undertaking. 
Besides, the basis for such an establishment was not to be found 
at Wartensee. Schnyder had, indeed, with a generosity never too 
greatly to be admired and praised, made over to us his castle and 
all its furniture, his plate, his splendid library, — in short, all that 
was in or around the castle was fully at our disposition ; but 
he would permit no new buildings or alterations of any sort, and 
as the rooms assigned to us were in no way suitable for our use, 
it was evident that his generous support must be regarded as 
-only a temporary and passing assistance. We perceived the evil 



* The Wartensee is a small lake in the canton Luzern, not far from Sempach, 

f About 30J, 

I Auf Schuster's Rappen,— 1.^., on foot. (This was in 1832.) 



132 Critical Moments in 



of our situation in all its keenness, but we saw no way out of the 
difficulty. 

In a most remarkable way there dawned upon us a new pro- 
spect at the very moment when we least expected it. We were sit- 
ting one day in a tavern near Wartensee, and talking of our struggles 
with some strangers who happened to be there. Three travellers 
were much interested in our narrative. They gave themselves 
out as business people from Willisau/'' and soon informed us that 
they had formed the notion of trying to get some assistance for 
us, and our enterprise for their native town. This they actually 
did. We received an invitation from twenty associated well-to-do 
families in Willisau to remove our school there, and more fully 
to work out our plans amongst them. The association had 
addressed the cantonal authorities, and a sort of castle was allotted 
provisionally to us. About forty pupils from the canton at once 
entered the school, and now we seemed at last to have found 
what we had so long been seeking. But the priests rose up 
furiously against us with a really devilish force. We even went 
in fear of our lives, and were often warned by kind-hearted people 
to turn back, when we were walking towards secluded spots, or 
had struck along the outlying paths amongst the mountains. To 
what abominable means this spirit of bigotry resorted, the follow 
ing example may serve to show. 

In Willisau a church festival is held once a year, in which a 
communion-wafer is shown, miraculously spotted with blood. 
The drops of blood were believed by the people to have been 
evoked from the figure of Jesus by the crime of two gamblers ; 
who, having cursed Jesus, flung their sword at him, whereupon 
the devil appeared. As ''God be with us"t seized the villains 
by the throat, a few drops of blood trickled from Jesus' wounds. 
To prevent others, therefore, from falling in a like way into the 
power of the arch-deceiver, a yearly commemorative festival is 
held at Willisau. The wafer is shown as a warning to devout 

* A small town not far away, still in the canton Luzern. 

f This was a familiar name for the devil, till a few years back, in Germany ; 
surprisingly recalling the term " Eumenides " for the Greek Furies, since it 
originated in a desire to speak of so powerful an enemy in respectful terms, lest 
he should take offence. 



the Froebel Community, 133 



people, who flock in crowds from all parts of the neighbourhood 
to join in the procession which closes the ceremony. We felt of 
course compelled to attend, and as we wished to take our part, 
we offered to lead the singing. I feared an outbreak, and I earnestly 
implored my friends to keep quiet under any circumstances, and 
whatever happened, to give no pretext for any excitement. Our 
singing was finished, when in the place of the expected preacher, 
suddenly there appeared a blustering, fanatical Capuciiin monk. 
He exhausted himself in denunciations of this God-forsaken, 
wicked generation, sketched in glaring colours the pains of hell 
awaiting the accursed race, and then fell fiercely upon the alarmed 
Willisauers, upbraiding them, as their worst sin, with the fostering 
of heretics in their midst, the said '' heretics " being manifestly 
ourselves. Fiercer and fiercer grew his threats, coarser and 
coarser his insults against us and our well-wishers, more and more 
horrible his pictures of the flames of hell, into grave danger 
of which the Willisauers, he said, had fallen by their awful sin. 
Froebel stood as if benumbed, without moving a muscle, or 
changing a feature, exactly in face of the Capuchin, in amongst 
the people ; and we others also looked straight before us, immov- 
able. The parents of our pupils, as well as the pupils themselves, 
and many others, had already fled midway in the monk's Jeremiad. 
Every one expected the affair to end badly for us ; and our friends, 
outside the church, were taking precautions for our safety, and 
concerting measures for seizing the monk who was thus inciting 
the mob to riot. We stood quite still all the time in our places 
listening patiently to the close of the Capuchin's tirade : " Win, 
then, for yourselves an everlasting treasure in heaven," shouted 
he, " bring this misery to an end, and suffer the wretched men to 
remain no longer amongst you. Hunt the wolves from the land, 
to the glory of God and the rage of the devil. Then will peace 
and blessing return, and great joy in heaven with God, and on 
earth with those who heartily serve Him and His saints. Amen." 
Hardly had he uttered the last word than he disappeared through 
a side door and was no more seen. As for us, we passed quietly 
through the staring and threatening mob. No hand was raised 
against us at that moment, but danger lay about us on every side, 
and it was no pleasure to recognise the fact that the sword of 



134 Critical Moments in 



Damokles always hung by a hair over our head. Feeling very 
uneasy at our insecure condition, I was sent, on the part of the 
rest, to the authorities of the canton, especially to Abbe Girard,* 
and the mayor, Eduard Pfyffer, to beg that they would provide 
for our safety with all the means in their power. On my way I 
was recognised by a priest for one of the newly-introduced 
" heretics " as I rested a moment in an inn. The people there 
began to talk freely about me, and to cast looks of hatred and 
contempt at me. At last, the priest waxing bolder and bolder,, 
accused me aloud of abominable heresy. I arose slowly, crossed 
with a firm step over to the black-frocked one, and asked him,. 
" Do you know, sir, who Jesus Christ was, and do you hold Him 
in any particular esteem ? " Quite nonplussed by my firm and 
quiet address he stammered out, ^* Certainly, He is God the Son,. 
and we must all honour Him and believe on Him, if we are to 
escape everlasting damnation." I continued, " Then perhaps you 
can tell me whether Christ was a Catholic or a Protestant ? " 

The black-frock was silenced, the crowd stared, and presently 
began to applaud. The priest made off, and I was left in peace.. 
My question had answered better than a long speech. 

In Eduard Pfyffer I found an estimable sterling man of humane 
and firm character. He started from the fundamental principle 
that it was of little use freeing the people from this or that 
special superstition, but that we should do better by working 
for the future against sloth of thought and want of independent 
mental character from the very bottom — namely, by educating our 
young people. Therefore, he set great store by our undertaking. 
And when I told him of our downcast spirits and the absolute 
danger in which we lived at the moment, he replied : — " There is 
only one way to ensure your safety. You must win over the 
people. Work on a little longer, and then invite them all from lar 
and near to a public examination. If this test wins over the 
crowd to your side, then, and only tlien, are you out of harm's 
reach." I went home, and we followed this counsel. The ex- 
amination was held on a lovely day in autumn. A great crowd 

* A Swiss educational writer of great power and charm. His school books^ 
** Sur la langue maternelle," are really valuable. 



the Froebel Community. 135 



from several cantons flocked together, and there appeared dele- 
gates from the authorities of Zurich, of Bern, and other cantons. 
Our contest with the clerical party, which had been commented 
upon in most of the Swiss journals, had drawn all eyes upon us. 
We scored a great victory with our examination. The children 
developed so much enthusiasm, and answered so readily, that all 
were agreeably surprised, and rewarded us with loud applause. 
From seven in the morning till seven in the evening lasted this 
examination, closing with games and gymnastic exercises per- 
formed by the whole school. We rejoiced within ourselves ; for 
our undertaking might now be regarded as fairly floated. The 
institution was spoken of in the great Council of the Canton, and 
most glowing speeches were delivered in our favour by Herr 
Pfyffer, Herr Amrhyn, and others. The Council decided that the 
castle and its outbuildings should be let to us at a very cheap 
rate, and that the Capuchin who had openly incited to riot 
against us should be expelled from the canton. 

A little time after this examination a deputation from Bern 
came to invite Froebel to undertake the organisation of an 
Orphanage at Burgdorf. Froebel suggested that he should not 
be restricted to teach orphans alone in the new establishment ; 
his request was granted, and he then accepted the invitation. 

With this, it seemed to me, my mission in Switzerland was at 
an end, and I began to long to return to Keilhau ; my eldest son 
was now a year old, and I had never 3'et seen him. Middendorft' 
left his family, and replaced me at Willisau, living there for four 
years far away from wife and child.- At Keilhau I found things 
had improved, and the numbers had increased most cheeringly. I 
determined to throw all my strength into the work of raising 
the mother institution from her slough of debt. I began by a 
piece of honourable swindling : and borrowed of Peter to pay 
Paul, covering one debt witn another, but at the same time 
making it appear that we were paying our way. In this fashion 
our damaged credit was restored, and as the receipts grew 



* The editors venture to call attention to these little facts as a sample of the 
extraordinary devotion and sacrifice which Froebel knew how to inspire in his 
colleagues. This exchange of Barop and Middendorff took place in 1833. 



1^6 Critical Moments in 



happily greater and greater, I began to gain ground. Eventually 
I was able to send help to the other branches of our community, 
to increase my help as time went on, and to prepare a place of 
refuge for them if anj'thing went wrong elsewhere. 

In Switzerland our enterprise did not develop as rapidly as we 
desired, in spite of the sanction of the Council of the Canton. 
The institution at Willisau gained unlimited confidence there ; but 
the malevolent opposition of the clerical party secretly flourished 
as before, and succeeded in depriving it of all aid from more 
distant places. Under these circumstances we could not attain 
that prosperity which so much activity and self-sacrificing w^ork 
on the part of our circle must otherwise infallibly have brought. 

Ferdinand Froebel and Middendorff remained in Willisau. 
Froebel and his wife went to Burgdorf, to found and direct the 
proposed Orphanage.* In his capacity as Director, Froebel had to 
give what was called a Repetitive Course to the teachers. In 
that Canton, namel}^ there w^as an excellent regulation which 
gave three months' leave to the teachers once in every two 
3'ears.t During this leave they assembled at Burgdorf, 
mutually communicated their experiences, and enriched their 
culture with various studies. Froebel had to preside over the 
debates and to conduct the studies, which were pursued in 
common. His own observations and the remarks of the teachers 
brought him anew to the conviction that all school education was 
as 3'et without a proper foundation, and, therefore, that until the 
education of the nursery was reformed nothing solid and worthy 
could be attained. The necessity of training gifted capable 
mothers occupied his soul, and the importance of the education 
of childhood's earliest years became more evident to him than 
ever. He determined to set forth fully his ideas on education, 
which the tryanny of a thousand opposing circumstances had 
alwaj^s prevented him from working out in their completeness ; 
or at all events to do this as regards the earliest years of man, 
and then to win over the world of women to the actual accom- 
plishment of his plans. Pestalozzi's "Mothers' Book" [Buck der 



* In 1833. 

t This regulation is still happily in force. 



the Froebel Comtnunity. 137 



Mutter) Froebel would replace by a complete theoretical and 
practical system for the use of women in general. An external 
circumstance supervened at this point to urge him onwards. 
His wife grew alarmingly ill, and the physicians prescribed com. 
plete absence from the sharp Swiss mountain air. Froebel asked 
to be permitted to resign his post, that he might retire to Berlin. 
The Willisau Institution, although outwardly flourishing, was 
limited more and more narrowly by the bigotry of the priests, 
and must evidently now be soon given up, since the Government 
had passed into the hands of the Jesuit party. Langethal and 
Ferdinand Froebel were nominated Directors of Burgdort. 
Middendorff rejoined his family at Keilhau. Later on, Langethal 
split off from the community and accepted the direction of a girls 
school in Bern (that school which, after Langethal, the well-known 
Frohlich conducted); but Froebel never forgave him this step. 
Ferdinand Froebel remained, till his sudden and early death, 
Director of the Orphanage at Burgdorf. A public funeral, such as 
has never found its equal at Burgdorf, bore witness to the amount 
of his great labours, and to the general appreciation of their value. 
When Friedrich Froebel came back from Berlin, the idea of an 
institution for the education of little children had fully taken shape 
in his mind. I took rooms for him in the neighbouring Blanken- 
burg.t Long did he rack his brains for a suitable name for his 
new scheme. Middendorff and I were one day walking to 
Blankenburg with him over the Steiger Pass. He kept on 
repeating, ''Oh, if I could only think of a suitable name for my 
youngest 'born ! " Blankenburg lay at our feet, and he walked 
moodily towards it. Suddenly he stood still as if fettered fast to 
the spot, and his eyes assumed a wonderful, alm.ost refulgent, 
brilliancy Then he shouted to the mountains so that it echoed 
to the four winds of heaven, " Eureka ! I have it ! Kindergarten 
shall be the name of the new Lislitution ! " 



* In 1836. , , , , ^ ^ 

t Blankenburg lies on the way from Schwavzburg to Rudolstadt, about two 

hours' walk away from Keilhau. 



138 Barop, Middendorff, 




JHUS wrote Barop in or about the year 1862, after 
he had seen all his friends pass away, and had him- 
self become prosperous and the recipient of many 
honours. The University of Jena made him a doctor, 
and the Prince of Rudolstadt created him his 
Minister of Education. Froebel slept in Liebenstein, and Midden- 
dorff at the foot of the Kirschberg in Keilhau. They sowed and 
reaped not ; and yet to possess the privilege of sowing, was it not 
equivalent in itself to reaping a very great reward ? In any event, 
it is delightful to remember that Froebel, in the April of 1852, the 
year in which he died (June 21st), received public honours at the 
hands of the general congress of teachers held in Gotha. When 
he appeared that large assembly rose to greet him as one man ; 
and Middendorff, too, who was inseparable from Froebel, so that 
when one appeared the other was not far off, had before his death 
(in 1853) the joy of hearing a similar congress at Salzungen 
declare the system of Froebel to be of world-wide importance, 
and to merit on that account their especial consideration and their 
most earnest examination. 

A few words on Middendorff, culled from Lange's account, may 
be serviceable. Middendorff was to Froebel as Aaron was to 
Moses. Froebel, in truth, was ^^ slow of speech and of a slow 
tongue" (Exod. iv. 10), and Middendorff was " his spokesman unto 
the people" (v. 16). It was the latter's clearness and readiness 
of speech which won adherents for Froebel amongst people who 
neither knew him nor could understand him. In 1849 Midden- 
dorff had immense success in Hamburg ; but when Froebel came, 
later on, to occupy the ground thus conquered beforehand, he had 
to contend against much opposition, for every one missed the 
easy eloquence of Middendorff, which had been so convincing. 
Dr. Wichard Lange came to know Froebel when the latter visited 
Hamburg in the winter of 1849-50. At this time he spent 
almost every afternoon and evening with him, and held the post 
of editor of Froebel's Weekly Journal. Even after this close associa- 
tion with Froebel, he found himself unable thoroughly to go with 



and Wtchard Lange. 139 

the schemes for the education of little children, the Kindergarten, 
and with those for the training of Kindergarten teachers. " Never 
mind ! " said Froebel, out of humour, when Lange told him this ; 
" if you cannot come over to my views now, you will do so in 
ten years' time; but sooner or later, come you must/" Dr. Lange 
nobly fulfilled the prophecy, and the edition of Froebel's collected, 
works (Berlin 1862), from which we derive the present text (and 
much of the notes), was his gift of repentance to appease the 
wrath of the Manes of his departed friend and master. Nor was 
he content with this ; but by his frequent communications to The 
Educational Journal [Die Rheim'schen Blatter), originally founded by 
Diesterweg, and by the Froebelian spirit which he was able to 
infuse into the large boys'-school which he long conducted at 
Hamburg, he worked for the " new education " so powerfully and 
so unweariedly that he must be always thankfully regarded as one 
of the principal adherents of the great teacher. His connection 
with the Frcebel community was further strengthened by a most, 
happy marriage with the daughter of Middendorff. 



CHRONOLOGICAL ABSTRACT OF THE 
PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN THE LIFE 
OF FROEBEL, AND THE FROEBEL 
COMMUNITY. 



1770. June 24th. — Birth of Christian Ludwig Froebel. 

1780. Sept. 17th.— Birth of Friedrich Froebel's first wife, Henriette Wilhel- 
mine Hoffmeister, at Berlin. 
Christian Froebel's wife, Johanna Caroline Miigge, was also born in 
1 780, on August 28th. 
1782. April 2 1 St. — Birth of Friedrich Froebel, at Oberweissbach, Thuringia. 

1792. Froebel is sent to Superintendent Hoffman in Stadt Ilm. 
Sept. 3rd. — Birth of Heinrich Langethal, at Erfurt. 

1793. Sept. 20. — Birth of Wilhelm Middendorff, at Brechten, near Dortmund, 

in Westphalia. 
1797. Froebel is sent to Neuhof in the Thuringian Forest to learn forestry. 
1 799. Froebel returns home ; goes thence as student to Jena. 

1801. He leaves Jena (having closed his career there with nine weeks' im- 

prisonment for debt), and soon afterwards begins to study farming 
with a relative of his father's at Hildburghausen. 
Dec. 29th. — Birth of Albertine Froebel (Madame Middendorff), eldest 
daughter of Christian Froebel. 

1802. Death of Froebel's father. Froebel becomes Actuary to the Forestry 

Department of the Episcopal State of Bamberg. 
Nov. 29th. — Birth of Johannes Arnold Barop, at Dortmund, in West 
phalia. 

1803. Froebel goes to Bamberg, and takes part in the governmental land 

survey, necessary upon the change of government, Bamberg now 
passing to Bavaria. 

1804. He takes, one after the other, two situations as secretary and accountant 

of a large country estate, first, that of Herr von Voldersdorf in 
Baireuth, afterwards that of Herr von Dewitz in Gross Milchow, 
Mecklenburg. 
July nth. — Birth of Emilie Froebel (Madame Barop), second daughter 
of Christian Froebel. 



Chronological Abstract. 141 



1805. Death of Froebel's maternal uncle, Superintendent Hoffman. Froebel 
determines to become an architect, and sets out for Frankfurt to study 
there. Becomes, however, teacher in the Model School at Frank- 
furt, on Gruner's invitation. Visits Pestalozzi, at Yverdon, for a 
short time. 

1807. He becomes tutor in the family of Herr von Holzhausen in the suburbs 

of Frankfurt. 

1808. He goes to Pestalozzi at Yverdon with his pupils. 

1809. He draws up an account of Pestalozzi's work for the Princess of 

Rudolstadt. 

1810. Froebel returns to Frankfurt from Yverdon. 

181 1. He goes to the University of Gottingen. 

1812. He proceeds thence to the University of Berlin. 

1813. Froebel, Langethal, and Middendorff enlist in Liitzow's regiment of 

Chasseurs, a volunteer corps enrolled to take part in the resistance 
to Napoleon's invasion of Prussia. 

1814. Jan. 5th. — Birth of Elise Froebel (Madame Schaffner), Christian's 

youngest daughter. 
After the Peace of Paris (May 30th, 1814) Froebel is appointed assistant 
in the Mineralogical Museum of the University of Berlin, and takes 
his post there in August. 

18 1 6. Nov. 13th. — Froebel founds his *' Universal German Educational 

Institute " in Griesheim. 

1817. Tx^ansference of the School to Keilhau. Arrival of Langethal and 

Middendorff. 

1818. First marriage of Froebel. 

1820. Christian Froebel arrives at Keilhau with his wife and daughters 

Froebel writes " To the German people." 

1 82 1. Froebel publishes (privately) " Principles, Aims, and Inner Life of 

the Universal German Educational Institute in Keilhau," and 
" Aphorisms." 

1822. He publishes the pamphlets *' On German Education, especially as 

regards the Universal German Educational Institute at Keilhau," 
and " On the Universal German Educational Institute at Keilhau." 

1823. He publishes " Continuation of the Account of the Educational Institute 

at Keilhau." 

1824. He publishes the pamphlet " Christmas at Keilhau." 

1826. Marriages of Langethal and Middendorff. Froebel publishes tht 

"Education of Man" (*'Menschen Erziehung "). Later he founds 
the weekly Fa7}iily Journal of Education. 

1827. Letter to the Duke of Meiningen (translated in this present work), 

uncompleted, probably never sent to the duke. 

1828 Letter to Krause (partly translated in the present work). Barop for- 
mally becomes a member of the Educational Community at Keilhau. 

1829. Plan for a National Educational Institute in Helba, under the auspices 



142 Chronological Abstract. 

of the Duke of Meiningen, now completed, the whole Keilhau 
community having worked upon it under Froebel's direction. 

1830. Death of Wilhelm Carl, one of the Keilhau community, by drowning in 

the Saale. 

1831. Froebel breaks with the Duke of Meiningen, and gives up the lielba 

project. 
Visit to Frankfurt, and meeting with Schnyder. 
Acceptance of Schnyder's offer of his Castle at Wartensee. 
Opening of the Institution at Wartensee by Froebel and his nephew 

Ferdinand. 

1832. Barop goes to Wartensee. Transference of the School from Wartensee 

to Willisau. Froebel pays a short visit to Keilhau. 
1833 Froebel brings his wife to Willisau. The Bernese Administration invites 
him to consider a plan for the foundation of an Orphanage at Burg- 
dorf. He is appointed lecturer for the Repetitive Courses for young 
teachers held there, Langethal comes from Keilhau to Willisau, 
Barop returns to Keilhau. 

1835. Froebel, his wife, and Langethal undertake the foundation of the 

Orphanage for Bern, in Burgdorf. Middendorff and Elise Froebel 
go from Keilhau to Willisau and join Ferdinand Froebel there. 
Froebel writes "The New Year 1836 demands a Renewal of Life." 

1836. Froebel and his wife leave Burgdorf for Berlin. Ferdinand Froebel and 

Langethal take over the direction of the Orphanage. 

1837. Opening of the first Kindergarten in Blatikenburg. 

1838. Commencement of Froebels Sunday Journal. 

1839. Froebel and Middendorff go to Dresden. Death of Madame Froebel. 

1840. Guttenberg Festival (400th anniversary of the invention of printing). 

Opening of the Universal German Kindergarten at Blankenburg, as a 
joint-stock company. Froebel and Middendorff in the following 
years make several journeys from Keilhau to various parts of Germany 
endeavouring to promote the erection of Kindergartens. 
•1848. General Congress of Teachers, called by Froebel, at Rudolstadt. Second 
journey of Froebel to Dresden in the autumn. 

1849. Froebel settles at Liebenstein intending to train Kindergarten teachers 

there. Work at Hamburg, first by Middendorff, then by Froebel. 

1850. Froebel returns to Liebenstein. Through the influence of Madame von 

Marenholtz-Bulow he receives the neighbouring country seat of 
Marienthal from the Grand Duke of Weimar for the purposes of 
his Training College. Foundation of a new Weekly Journal of 
Education by Froebel, edited by Lange. Marriage of Elise Froebel 
to Dr. Siegfried Schaffner. 

(1851. Jan. 9th. — Death of Christian Ludwig Froebel. 

July. — Second marriage of Froebel, with Luise Levin. First appearance 
of \}ci^ Journal for Frit drich FroebeVs hducational Aims. 

.1852. April.- — Froebel is called to join the Educational Congress at Gotha, 
under the presidency of Theodor Hoffman, 



Chronological Abstract. H3 



Tune 21.- Death of Froebel. His educational establishment at Manen- 
thal is removed to Keilhau, under the superintendence of Midden- 
dorff. Madame Luise Froebel also assists to train students m the 
methods of the Kindergarten at Keilhau. 
1853. Middendorff enthusiastically received at the Congress at Salzungen, when 
addressing it on the Froebelian methods. 
Nov. 27th.-Death of Middendorff. Madame Luise Froebel, for a time, 

directs Keilhau. • . -n, 

,854. Madame Luise Froebel goes in the spring to Dresden, to assist Dr. 
Marquart in his Kindergarten and training establishment for Kmder- 
garten teachers. Madame Marquart had been a pupil of Froebel. 
Keilhau ceases to be a training school for Kindergarten teachers. 
In the autumn Madame Luise Froebel accepts the directorship of the 
Public Free Kindergarten in Hamburg, and trains students there. 
(She is still actively employed at Hamburg in the cause of the 
Kindergarten ; 1886.) ^ , , . at- 

First introduction of the Kindergarten system into England by Miss 
Pr^etorius, who founds a Kindergarten at Fitzroy Square. Madame 
von Marenholtz Billow, who was the support of Froebel's latest years, 
whose influence with the Grand Duke of Weimar procured him 
Marienthal, and whose whole leisure and power was devoted to his 
service, and to the interpretation of his ideas, comes to England 
to lecture and write in support of the cause of the Kindergarten. 
Publishes a pamphlet on " Infant Gardens," in English. 
Madame Ronge introduces the Kindergarten system at Manchester; and 
shortly afterwards the Manchester Kindergarten Association is founded. 
1859. Miss Eleonore Heerwart (pupil of Middendorff and Madame Luise 
Froebel), and the Baroness Adele von Portugall (pupil of Madame 
von Marenholtz-Bulow and of Madame Schrader, the great mece of. 
Froebel), come to England, and are both engaged at Manchester 
as Kindergarten teachers, but not in the same establishment. 
i860 August 1 8th. -Death of Madame Barop(Emilie Froebel). 
,861 The Baroness Bertha Von Marenholtz-Bulow promotes the fo^^da^ion 
of the Journal The Education of the Future, and Dr. Carl Schmidt of 
Coethen undertakes the editorship. 
1874 ApriL-Madame Michaelis comes to England to assist the Kindergarten 
movement. Is appointed in the summer to lecture to the school- 
board teachers at Croydon. Founds Croydon Kindergarten, January 
1875, with Mrs. Berry. 
Nov -The London School Board appoint Miss Bishop (pupil of Miss 
Pr^etorius) as their first lecturer on the Kindergarten System to their 
teachers of infant schools. About the same time Miss Heerwart (who 
had left Manchester to found a Kindergarten of her own in Dublin in 
1866) is appointed principal of the Kindergarten Training College 
established at Stockwell by the British and Foreign School Society. 



144 Chronological Abstract. 

The Froebel Society of London is formed by Miss Doreck, Miss 
Heerwart, Miss Bishop, Madame Michaelis, Professor Joseph Payne, 
and Miss Manning; Miss Doreck being the first president. Very 
soon these were joined by Miss Shireff (president since 1877, when 
Miss Doreck died), by her sister Mrs. William Grey, by Miss Mary 
Gurney, and by many other well-known friends of educational 
progress. 

1879. Autumn. — The London Kindergarten Training College is founded by 
the Froebel Society, but as a separate association (dissolved 1883). 

18S0. May. — Tlie Croydon Kindergarten Company (Limited), is founded to- 
extend Madame Michaelis's work in teaching and training, Madame 
Michaelis becoming the Company's head mistress. 

1882. Langethal died. Celebration of the Centenary of Froebel's birth by a 

concert, given at Willis's Rooms, London, on the part of the Froebel 
Society, to raise funds for a memorial Kindergarten at Blankenburg, 
by a fund raised at Croydon for the same purpose, and by a soiree 
and conversazione, presided over by Mr. W. Woodall, M. P., given 
at the Stockwell Training College by the British and Foreign School 
Society. 

1883. January. — The Bedford Kindergarten Company (Limited) founded,. 

mainly upon the lines of the Croydon Company. First (and present) 
head mistress. Miss Sim, 
Miss Heerwart goes to Blankenburg to found the memorial Kinder- 
garten there. 

1884. International Exhibition, South Kensington (Health and Education). 

A Conference on Education was held in June, the section devoted 
to Infant Education being largely taken up with an important discus- 
sion of Froebel's principles, in which speakers of other nations joined 
the English authorities in debate. 

The British and Foreign Society organised a complete exhibition of 
Kindergarten work and materials, to which all the chief London 
Kindergarten establishments (including Croydon) contributed ; and 
most establishments gave lessons in turn, weekly, to classes of children, 
in order to show publicly the practical application of Kindergarten 
methods. These lessons were given gratuitously in the rooms devoted 
to the Kindergarten section of the exhibition. In October this 
section was closed by a conference of Kindergarten teachers from all 
England, held in the Lecture Theatre of the Albert Hall. 

Autumn. — Di". Wichard Lange, the biographer of Froebel, and collector 
of Froebel's works (from whose collection the present translation 
has been made), and by his numerous articles one of the best friends 
to the advocacy of Froebel's educational principles, died, under, 
somewhat painful circumstances. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF FROEBEL. 

Walter, L. DieFroebel-Literatur. 8vo, pp. 198. Dresden. .$1.00 

Gesammelte paedagogische Schriften, lirsg. W. Lange. 

Svo, 3 vols. [I. Autobiograpliie; II. Menschenerziehung ; 

III. Padagogik des Kindergartens]. Berlin, 1862 

Paedagogische Schriften, hrsg. Friedrich Seidel. 12mo, 3 

vols. [I. Menschen-Erziehung, pp. 330; II. Kindergarten- 

Wesen, pp. 463; III. Mutter- und Kose-Lieder, pp. 228]. 

Wien, 1883 ^'^^ 

Menschen-Erziehung. Erziehungs-, Unterrichts-, und Lehr- 

kunst. 12mo, pp. 330. Wien, 1883 200 

The Education of Man. Translated by Josephine Jarvis. 

12rao, pp. 273. New York, 1885 • • • • • ^-^^ 

The same, translated and annotated by W. N. Hailmann. 

12mo, pp. 332. New York, 1887 l-^O 

L' Education de l' Homme. Traduit de I'allemand par la 

baronne de Crombugghe. 12mo, pp. 394. Paris, 1881 . . . 

Mutter- und Kose-Lieder. Dichtung und Bilder zur edlen 

Pflege des Kindheitlebens. Ein Familien-buch. 12mo, 

pp.228. Wien,1883 ^'^^ 

Mother's Songs, Games and Stories. Froebel's ' ' Mutter- und 
Kose-Lieder" rendered in English by Frances and Emily 
Lord. Containing the whole of the original illustrations, 
and the music, rearranged for children's voices, with piano- 

forthe accompaniment. 8vo. pp. 289. London, 1885 3.00 

Mother-Play, and Nursery Songs. Illustrated by Fifty En- 
gravings. With Notes to Mothers. By Friedrich Froe- 
bel Translated from the German, 4to, pp. 192. Boston, 

. 2.00 

1878 ••; 

The Mother's Book of Song. Two-part Songs for Little Sing- 
ers, on the Kindergarten System. The music composed 
by Lady Baker; edited by G. A. Macfarran. 16mo. New 

York • 

Autobioraphie. Berlin, 1862. 

(145) 



146 Autobiography of Froebel. 



The Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel. Translated by 
H. Keatley Moore and Emilie Michaelis. 12mo, pp. 180. 

Syracuse, 1889 1.50 

[This contains the "Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," never 

completed, a shorter account of his life in a letter to the philosopher 

Krause, a sketch of Barop's, and a chronology extended from 

Lange.] 

Autobiography of Froebel. Materials to aid a Comprehen- 
sion of the Work of the Founder of the Kindergarten. 

16mo, pp. 128. New York, 1887 30 

[This contains the "Letter to the Duke of Meiningen," Miss 

Lucy Wheelock's translation, taken from Barnard's Journal of Edu- 

catioji.] 

Froebel's Explanation of the Kindergarten System. Lon- 
don, 1886 20 



Hauschmann, a. B, Fr. Froebel: die Entwicklung s. Erzie- 

hungs-idee in s. Leben. 8vo, pp. 480. Eisenach, 1874 2.00 

Kriege, Matilda H. The Founder of the Kindergarten. A 

Sketch. 12mo, pp. 29. New York 

[See also Marenholz-Buelow, in next list below. ] 

Marenholz-Buelow, Baroness B. von. Reminiscences of 
Friedrich Froebel. Translated by Mrs. Horace Mann. 
With a sketch of the life of Friedrich Froebel, by Emily 

Shirrefe. 12mo, pp. 359. Boston, 1877 1.50 

[See also Goldammer. Marenholz-Buelow.] 

Phelps, Wm. F. Froebel (Chautauqua Text-Book, No. 15). 

32mo, pp. 54 10 

Shirreff, Emily. Froebel: a Sketch of his Life, with Let- 
ters to his Wife. 12mo. London, 1877 1.00 

[See also Marenholz-Buelow, above, and Shirreff, below.] 

Bailey's Kindergarten System. Boston 20 

Barnard, Henry. Papers on Froebel's Kindergarten, with 
suggestions on principles and methods of Child Culture in 

different countries. Svo, pp. 782. Hartford, 1881 3.50 

Beesau, Amable. The Spirit of Education. Translated by 

Mrs. E. M. McCarthy. 16mo. pp. 325. Syracuse, 1881. . . 1.35 



Bibliography. 147 



Berky, Ada, and Emily Miciiaelis. Kindergarten Songs 

and Games, 12mo. London 75 

BucKLAND, Anna. The Use of Stories in the Kindergarten. 

12mo, pp. 17. New York 20 

The Happiness of Childhood. 12mo, pp. 21, in one vol- 
ume with the above. New York 50 

[The two are reprinted in " Essays on the Kindergarten," below.] 

Carpenter, Harvey. The Mother's and Kindergartner's 

Friend. 12mo. Boston, 1884 1.00 

Christie, Alice M. See Marenholz-Buelow, Perez, below, 

DouAi, Adolf. The Kindergarten. A manual for the intro- 
duction of Froebel's System of Primar}' Education into 
Public Schools; and for the use of Mothers and Private 
Teachers. With 16 plates. 12mo, pp. 136. New York, 
1871 1.00 

DuPANLOUP, Monseigneur, The Child. Translated, with the 
author's permission, by Kate Anderson. 12mo, pp. 267. 
Dublin, 1875 1.50 

EcKHART, T. Die Arbeit als Erziehungsmittel. 8vo, pp. 23. 
Wien, 1875. . „ 

Essays on the Kindergarten: being a selection of Lectures 
read before the London Froebel Society. 12mo, pp. 149, 

Syracuse, 1889 1,00 

[See Buckland, Heerwart, Hoggan, Shirreff .] 

Fellner, A. Der Volkskindergarten und die Krippe. 12mo, 
pp. 130. Wien, 1884 

Frye, Alex. E. The Child and Nature, or Geography Teach- 
ing with Sand Modelling. 12mo, pp. 216. Hyde Park, 1888. 1.00 

Goldammer, H. The Kindergarten. A Handbook of Froe- 
bel's Method of Education, Gifts, and Occupations. With 
Introduction, etc., by Baroness B. von Marenholtz-Btllow. 
Translated by William Wright. 8vo. Berlin, 1882 4.00 

Gymnastische Spiele und Bildungsmittel filr Kinder von 

3-8 Jahren. 8vo, pp. 195. Berlin, 1875 

Gurney, Mary, See Koehler, below, 

Hailmann, W. N. Primary Helps, or Modes of making Froe- 
bel's Methods Available in Primary Schools, 2d Ed. 8vo, 
pp, 58, with 15 full-page illustrations. Syracuse, 1889 1.00 



148 A nto biography of Froebel. 

Four Lectures on Early Child Culture. 16mo, pp. 74. 

Milwaukee 50 

Kindergarten Culture in the Family and Kindergarten. 

A Complete Sketch of Froebel's System of Early Educa- 
tion, adapted to American Institutions. For tlie use of 
Mothers and Teachers. 12mo, pp. 119, and 12 plates. Cin- 
cinnati, 1873 75 

The Kindergarten Messenger and The New Education. 

Vols. V, VI, [completing the seiies]. 8vo, 2 vols., pp. 
146, 188. Syracuse, 1882, 83 4.00- 

Primary Methods. A complete and methodical presen- 



tation of the use of Kindergarten Material in the work of 
the Primary School, unfolding a systematic course of Man- 
ual Training in connection with Arithmetic, Geometry, 
Drawing, and other School Studies. 12mo, pp. 166. New 
York, 1888 1.00 

Hailmann, E. L. Songs, Games, and Rhymes for the Kin- 
dergarten. 12mo. Springfield 1.75 

Heerwart, Eleonore. Music for the Kindergarten. 4to. 

London, 1877 1.25 

Froebel's Mutter- und Kose-lieder. 12mo, pp. 18 

[The last is reprinted in " Essays on the Kindergarten," above.] 

Hoffmann, II. Kindergarten Toys, and How to Use Them. 

Toronto 20 

Kindergarten Gifts New York 15 

HoGGAN, Frances E. On the Physical Education of Girls. 

12mo, pp. 24 

[This is reprinted in " Essays on the Kindergarten," above.] 

Hopkins, Louisa P. How Shall My Child be Taught? Prac- 
tical Pedagogy, or the Science of Teaching. Illustrated, 
12mo, pp. 276. Boston, 1887 1.50 

Educational Psychology. A Treatise for Parents and 

Educators. 24mo, pp. 96. Boston, 1886 50 

Hubbard, Clara. Merry Songs and Games, for the use of the 

Kindergarten. 4to, pp. 104. St. Louis, 1881 2.00 

Hughes, James. The Kindergarten: its Place and Purpose. 

New York 10 

Jacobs, J. F. Manuel pratique des Jardins d' Enfants. 4to. 
Brussels, 1880 



Bibliography . 1 49 



Johnson, Anna. Education by Doing, or Occupations and 
Busy Work for Primary Classes. 16mo, pp. 109. New 

York. 1884 "^ 

Kindergarten and the School, by Four Active Workers. 

12mo, pp. 146. Springfield, 1886 1.00 

KoEHLER, A. Die Praxis des Kindergartens. 4to, 3 Vols., 

with more than 60 Plates. Weimar, 1878 

The Same, translated by Mary Gurney. Part I [First 

Gifts]. 12mo, 111. London, 1877 1-25 

Kraus-Boelte, Maria, and John Kraxjs, The Kindergarten 

Guide, illustrated. Vol. I [The Gifts]. New York, 1880. 2.75 

The Kindergarten and the Mission of Women. New 

York • 10 

Kriege, a. L. Rhymes and Tales for the Kindergarten and 

Nursery. 12mo, New York 1-00 

Laurie's Kindergarten Manual. New York 50 

Kindergarten Action Songs and Exercises. London. . . .15 

Lysciiin SKA, Mary. Principles of the Kindergarten. Ill.,4to, 

London. 1880 1^0 

Mann, Mrs. Horace. See Marenholz-Buelow, above, and 

Peabody, below. 
Marenholz-Buelow, Baroness B. von. The Child and Child- 
Nature. Translated by Alice M. Christie. 12mo, pp. 186. 

Syracuse, 1889 1-00 

The same, translated as " a free rendering of the Ger- 
man" by Matilda H. Kriege, under the title "The Child, 
its Nature and Relations; an elucidation of Froebel's 
Principles of Education." 12mo, pp. 148. New York, 1872. 1.00 

The School Work-Shop. Translated by Miss Susan E. 

Blow. 16mo, pp. 27. Syracuse, 1882 15 

Hand-work and Head-work: their relation to one anoth- 
er Translated by Alice M. Christie. 12mo. London, 

1883 1-20 

Maudsley, H. Sex in Mind and Education. 16mo, pp. 42. 

Syracuse, 1882 15 

Meiklejohn, J. M. D. The New Education. 16mo, pp. 85. 

Syracuse, 1881 15 

Meyer, Bertha. Von der Wiege bis zur Schule. 12mo, pp. 
180. Berlin, 1877 



150 Autobiography of F?'oebel. 



Aids to Family Government, or From the Cradle to the 

School, according to Froebel. Translated from the sec- 
ond German Edition. To which has been added an essay 
on The Rights of Children and The True Principles of 
Family Government, by Herbert Spencer. 16mo, pp. 208. 
New York, 1879 1.50 

Moore, N. A. Kiudergartner's Manual of Drawing Exer- 
cises for Young Children upon Figures of Plane Geome- 
try. 4to, pp. 16, and 17 Plates. Springfield 50 

MoRGENSTEiN, Liua. Das Paradies der Kindheit. Eine aus- 
fuhrliche Anleitung filr Mutter und Erzieherinnen. F. 
Froebel's Spiel-Beschaftigungen in Haus und Kindergart- 
en. 2ded. 8vo, pp. 292. Leipzig, 1878 

MuLLEY, Jane, and M. E. Tabram. Songs and Games for 

our Little Ones. 12mo. London, 1881 40 

NoA, Henrietta. Plays for the Kindergarten: music by C. J. 

Richter. 18mo. New York., 30 

Payne, Joseph. Froebel and the Kindergarten System. 3d 

ed. London, 1876 

[Now rare, but printed in "^ Lectures on Education," S^^ra- 
cuse, 1884, $1.00.] 

A Visit to German Schools. London, 1876 

Peabody, Elizabeth P. Moral Culture of Infancy, and Kin- 
dergarten Guide, with Music for the Plays. By Mrs. 
Horace Maun, and Elizabeth P. Peabody. 12mo, pp. 216. 
Boston, 1863 2.00 

The Education of the Kindergartner. Pittsburgh, 1872. 

The Nursery: a Lecture 

The Identification of the Artisan and Artist the Proper 

object of American Education 

Froebel's Kindergarten, with a letter from Henry Bar- 
nard. 12mo, pp. 16 

Lectures in the Training Schools for Kindergartners. 

12mo, pp. 226 

("Includes those on " The Education of the Kindergartner" and 
*' The Nursery," named above.] 
Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Pri- 



Bibliography. 1 5 ^ 



mary School. With an Introduction by E. Adelaide 

Manning. 12mo, pp. 224. London, 1887 1 -^O 

[A reprint of the "Lectures in the Training Schools."] 

and Mary Mann. After Kindergarten, what? A primer 



of Reading and Writing for the Intermediate Class, and 
Primary Schools generally. 12mo. New York 45 

Perez, Bernard. The First Three Years of Childhood. Ed- 
ited and translated by Alice M. Christie, with an introduc- 
tion by James Sully. 12mo, pp. 294. Syracuse. 1889. .. . 1.50 

Plays and Songs, for Kindergarten and Family. Springfield . .oO 

Pollock, Louisa. National Kindergarten Manual. 12mo, 

pp. 180. Boston, 1889 -^ '^'^ 

National Kindergarten Songs and Plays. 12mo, pp. 77 



Boston ' ■ ' 

Cheerful Echoes: from the National Kindergarten for 



.50 



.50 

3.00 

.15 



children from 3 to 10 years of age. 16mo, pp. 76. Bos- 
ton, 1888 

Preyer, W. The Mind of the Child. 12mo, 2 Vols. New 

York, 1888 

Richards, B. W. Learning and Health. 16mo. pp. 39. 

Syracuse, 1882 

RiCHTER, K. Kindergarten und Schule. Leipzig 

RONGE, Johann and Bertha. A Practical Guide to the Eng- 
lish Kindergarten (Children's Garden), for the use of 
Mothers, Governesses, and Lifant Teachers: being an ex- 
position of Froebel's system of Infant Training: accom- 
panied by a variety of Instructive and Amusing Games, 
Industrial and Gymnastic Exercises, also Numerous Songs 
set to Music, nth ed. 4to. pp. 80, and 71 plates. Lon- ^ 
don, 1878 • • • "• 

Shirreff. Emily. Essays and Lectures on the Kindergarten. 
Principles of Froebel's System, and their bearing on the 
Hi'-her Education of Women, Schools. Family, and In- 
dustrial Life. 12mo, pp. 112. Syracuse, 1889 LOO 

Progressive Development according to Froebel's Prm- 

ciples. 12mo, pp. 14. 

. Wasted Forces. 12mo, pp. 17 

. The Kindergarten in Relation to Schools. 12mo, pp. 

18. New York 



152 Autobiography of Froebel, 



— The Kindergarten in Relation to Family Life. 12mo, 

pp.17. New York 20 

[The last four are given in " Essays on the Kindergarten," above ] 
Home Education and the Kindergarten. 12mo. Lon- 
don. 1884 75 

The Kindeigarten at Home. 12nio. London, 1884 1.75 

Claim of Froebel's System to be called " The New Edu- 
cation. " New York, 1882 10 

Essays and Lectures in the Kindergarten. New York.. .75 

Singleton, J. E. Occupations and Occupation Games. 12mo, 

London, 1865 1.00 

Steele's Kindergarten Handbook. New York 60 

Steiger's Kindergarten Tracts. 24 nos. New York 10 

Straight, H. H. Aspects of Industrial Education. Svo, pp. 

12. Syracuse. 1883 15 

Thompson, Mrs. Elizabeth. Kindergarten Homes, for Orphans 
and other Destitute Children ; a new way to ultimately 
Dispense with Prisons and Poor-Houses. 12mo, pp. 128. 

New York, 1882 „ 1.00 

Weber, A. Die vier ersten Schuljahre in Vorbindung mit e. 

Kindergarten. Svo, pp. 70. Gotha 50 

Die Geschichte der Yolksschulpadagogik und der Klein- 

kindererziehung. 12mo, pp. 339. Dresden, 1877 

Wiebe, E. The Paradise of Childhood. A Manual for In- 
struction in F. Froebel's Educational Principles, and a 
Practical Guide to Kindergartners. 4to, pp. 78 and 74 

plates. Springfield 2.00 

— ^ The Paradise of Childhood: a manual of instruction 

and a practical guide to Kindergartners. 4to, 74 plates. 

London. 1888 4.00 

Songs, Music, and Movement Plays. Springfield 2.25 

WiGGiNs's Kindergarten Chimes. Springfield 1.50 

Wiltsie's Stories for Kindergartens and Primary Schools. 

Boston 30 

All books of which prices are given may be had of the pub- 
lisher of this volume. 



INDEX. 



Aaron to Froebel's Moses 138 

Activity at Yverdon ." 78 

Actor, life of an 26 

Adventists, doctrine of 13 

Esthetic sense 41 

Agriculturalist, life of an _ .24, 140 

Aim of educational work 11 

Albums, sentiments in 49, 50 

Alexander I. sends for Pestalozzi. .54 

Amrhyn, Herr 135 

Ante-Darwinian theories _ 31 

"Aphorisms ".. 141 

Arabic, study of 85 

Architecture as a profession.. 45, 46, 48, 50, 51. 108, 141 

Architectural efforts 41 

Arithmetic, teaching of... .20, 55, 59, 61, 99, 106 

philosophy of ^. 100 

Arndt, Ernest Moritz 45 

"Fragments of Culture "... 63 

Art, study of .34, 40 

Art of teaching .24 

Astronomy 86, 105 

Attire, peculiarities of.. 105 

Augsburg Confession _.50 

Austria interested in Pestalozzi 54 

Bach a Cantor .7 

Baireuth 43, 140 

Bamberg, life at 38, 47, 140 

Barop, Johannes Arnold 2, 16, 134, 138, 140, 141, 143 

' ' Critical Moments " 137-137 

Batsch, A. J. G 31 

(153) 



154 Autobiography of Froebel. 

Bauer, Herr 92, 93, 100 

Belief in himself ...._ 126 

Berlin, life at 89, 95, 100, 111, 121, 141, 142 

Bern 93 

Langethal's school at, 137 

Berry, Mrs. 143, 147 

Best friend, Froebel's 93, 94 

Bible biographies 53 

in schools ._ 8 

' ' Bible of Education " 63 

Birth of Froebel 3, 4, 140 

Bishop, Miss, appointed London lecturer 143 

Bivouac life agreeable 94 

Blankenburg. 137, 142, 144 

Boarding-school life ..18 

Book-keeping _ 43 

Botany, love of... 25, 27, 31, 56, 60 

Brandenburg, Mark of 93 

British and Foreign School Society 143, 144 

Brothers of Froebel. [See Froebel, below.] 

Burgdorf, Orphanage at 93, 135, 136, 137, 142 

Cantor. _.7 

Carl, Herr... 124, 142 

Cams, Professor. 38 

Characteristics in boyhood. 7 

Chemistry... 30, 87, 88 

organic _.88 

Cheve system of singing 56 

Child's need of construction 77 

Crispine, Ernestine. _ 123 

Christian education essential 120 

family life , 7 

forms 74 

" Christmas at Keilhau " 141 

Church and school. 8, 19 

attendance 10 

Class divisions elastic 54 



Index. 1^5 

Classical education _84 

teaching 99 

* ' Come let us live with them " 69 

Comenius 103 

Comet of 1811 86 

Commission of 1810 80 

Companionship 44 

Comprehensiveness essential 80 

Conditions of tutorship _66 

Confinement in boyhood 6 

Confirmation 22 

Congress of teachers at Rudolstadt 142 

at Gotha 142 

at Salzungen I43 

Construction essential to a child 77 

"Continuation of the account of Keilhau" 141 

Contradiction, life freed from 108 

Cosmical development 89 

Crisis at Yverdon 80 

Croydon Kindergarten I43 

Crystals a witness of life 112 

Cr3'stallography ...89, 97 

Culture, Froebel's plan of 107 

his own insufficient 109 

Death of Froebel ..93, 143 

of his father 38 

of his first wife 142 

Development, analysis to synthesis 118 

of being, laws of 112 

vs. memorizing 116 

Devotes himself to study of education 98 

Dewitz, Herrvon 42, 43, 45, 140 

Diary begun 36 

Diesterweg I39 

Divine worship at home 7^ 10 

Doreck, Miss I44 

Drawing, study of. 28, 55, 61, 62 



156 Autobiography of Froebel. 

Dresden. 91, 142, 143 

Duration of the world 13 

Earlier and later life compared 16 

Early education 3 

mental struggles 14, 16 

Education ad hoc. 23 

aim of 11 

as an object 58 

at Jena 28 

in relationships . 70 

purpose of 69 

reaches beyond life 119 

" Education of Man " 1, 76, 117, 141, 145 

Educator and teacher 68 

Energy in play. 21 

in rocks 97 

England, first kindergarten in 143 

E]phors_ - 21 

Escape from creditors 128 

' ' Exchange classes " 54 

Expression of thought difficult 73 

Eyes, deficient power of 30 

"Family Journal of Education " 117, 141, 142 

Family ties 44, 83 

Father of Froebel. [See Froebel, Johann Jacob.] 

and mother 118 

Fatherland vs. motlierland 90 

Fichte... - 116, 123 

Financial difficulties 33, 47, 106, 127, 128 

First consciousness of self 9 

grasp of the word Kindergarten 137 

idea of a school of his own 68 

work as a teacher 57 

Following Nature in geography 61 

Foresight of vocation as a teacher... ...108 

Forestry-apprentice. 24 

Form-development , 98 



Index. 157 

P'orm fixed for language 98 

Forms, study of 75, 76 

Forster, Johann Georg 94 

"Rhine Travels" 94, 121 

Francke's Padagogium 5.5 

Frankfurt, life at.... 47, 50, 57, 141, 142 

Model School ..57 

French, study of 64 

Froebel, temporary change of name -.. 46 

family 

Johann Jacob, the Father 3, 4, 6, 

17. 19, 21, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 36. 37, 38, 43, 140 

Brothers. 

Augustus 3, 32 

Christoph 3, 12, 

13, 15, 23, 26, 27, 32, 36, 47, 49, 65, C8, 83, 87, 113, 122 

His widow misunderstands Froebel . 122 

Julius Karl Theodor ..3, 4 

Christian Ludwig...4, 87, 113, 121, 124, 127, 128, 140, 141, 142 

Traugott... ...A, 23, 28, 32, 33 

Karl Poppo 4, 104 

Neiyheics. 

Ferdinand 113, 121, 131, 136, 137, 142 

Wilhelm _.. . 113,121 

Julius 114, 122 

Karl.. ....114, 122 

Nieces. 

Albertine [Middendorf] ...124, 140 

Emilie [Barop] 124, 140, 143 

Elise[Schaffner]. 124, 141,142 

Luise, Madame 143 

Froebel Society 1 , 1 44 

Froebel's style as an author. A, 117 

Frohlich 1 37 

Games 135 

a mental bath 82 

Gardening ...6, 71 



Auiobiog7'aphy of F?'oebel. 



GeograpLy, teaching of 60 

Geology... 88, 97 

Geometry 24, 25, 29,35 

German brotherhood ..90 

land and people 95 

language teaching ..56 

literature 35 

" German education" 114 

Gifts, first suggestion of 75 

Girard, Abbe 184 

Girls' school at Oberweissbach ..8, 9 

Godlike not alone in the great .97 

Godmother of Froebel. 73 

Goethe 35 

Gotha, congress of teachers at 142 

Gottingen, life at 84, 97, 103, 111, 141 

Gottling 30 

Government offices. _. 23, 38, 95 

Grammar, study of. 64 

Grammarians at odds 64 

Greek, study of 84, 85 

Grey, Mrs. William 144 

Griesheim 122, 124, 141 

Gross-Milchow 42, 140 

Gruner, Herr 51, 53, 58, 63, 66, 109, 141 

book on Pestalozzian methods 52 

Gurney, Mary 144, 147, 149 

Gymnastic Exercises . 135 

Halle 45 

Hamburg. 138, 142, 143 

Hardenburg, Prince. 54 

Harmonious development 55 

Harnisch 118 

Havelberg 92, 93, 121 

Hazel-buQs the clue of Ariadne 12 

Hebrew, study of 85 

Heerwart, Eleonore 143, 144, 147 

Hegel 116 



Index, ^59 

, , , 113 

his formulae adopted "■"i"fi"i02 129 141 

Helba, National Institution at 16, 102, l^^J, i^^^ 

Hell, belief in ' ^ 

Hermes -^-- "" gg 

Higher methods of teaching..----- "37 140 

Hildburghavisen ' gg 

History. ...^^-- "l7,"3lV43, 44, 140, 141 

Hoffmann, Herr ^'' • ' ^^^ 

Hoffman, Thedor.. --" Voq'uo 

Hoffmeister, Henrietta Wilhelmine ^^-^' ^^^ 

Holzhausen, Herr von.- - --^^^' ^^^ 

__ Madame von -- "/.'.e; 22. 27, 28 

Home of Froebel-- - -- ^^ ^^ 

abandoned -- ' 

liiV, 'i'i 

lifp 

^"^ .56, 69 

Hopf--- -- 

1 0'*' 

Identities and analogies sought out ^^ 

Iffiand's "Huntsman" ^^ 

Illusions have a true side 

Impressions of Pestalozzi 03 140 

Imprisoned for debt ' 

Individual life key to the universal ^^ 

Inner meaning of the vowels ^^ 

Inner law and order 

Instrumental music derived from vocal 

inaction a characteristic.4, 11, 25, 46, 49, 56, 72, 103, 104, 109, 115 

"■^''^""";';;"V'l 4, 5. 91, lo? 

Isolation of Froebel 

120 

Jahn. ---- --•• - '___ 28. 105,138.140 

Jena, life at ^^^ 

Jesus Christ, education based on - - - - - y --- - ^^^ 

" Journal of Education " -- ' ' " 

' • Journal for Froebel's Educational Aims " - "' ^'^ 

Joy of teaching ^^ 

Jussieu's Botany 

110 

SuLuVufe at::::::::::::::."::.'."--i6rro2;"io3, m, .35, ui, m 



i6o Autobiography of Froebel. 



Kindergarten occupations 129 

Knowledge of self through objects 97 

Korner in the "Wilde Schaar " ...91 

Kiause, Carl C. F. 9 102, 103, 116 

letter to 2, 102-125, 141 

Kriisi 55 

Lange, Wichard .102, 138, 144, 145 

editor of ' ' Family Journal " 138 

editor of Froebel's Works... 3, 32, 138 

Langethal, Heinrich 91, 93, 100, 

101, 120, 122, 123, 124, 137, 140, 141, 142, 144 

Language, philosophy of .81, 99 

teaching of 59, 64, 81, 84, 85 

Latin, study of. ..20, 23, 34, 84 

Legacies 86, 123 

Leipzig 91 

Leonhardi .- 103 

Lessons from Nature's training. 72 

Letter to the Duke of Meiningen. 2, 3-101, 141 

to Krause. 102-125, 141, 146 

"Levana" 70 

Liebenstein, life at ..142 

Life as a connected whole 104 

' ' Life, will, understanding "_ 118 

Lilies, vain search for 96 

London Kindergarten College 144 

Love of Nature, [See Nature, love of.] 

Luther, Martin 50 

Liitzow, Baron von ..91, 141 

Manchester Kindergarten Association 143 

Mankind as one great unity 84 

Manner in teaching. 21 

Manning, Miss 144 

Manual training at Helba 121 

Map-drawing .39, 61 

" Mappe du Monde Litteraire ". .36 

Marenholz-Bulow, Baroness von 73, 142, 143, 146, 149 



Index. 1 6 1 

Marienthal 1^^' ^^^ 

Marquart, Dr ..--143 

Madame ^^^ 

Master of the girls' school "^ 

Mathematics *• 

Matrimony. ^^ 

Mechanical powers, the ^" 

Mecklenburg - '*^' ^^ 

Meiningen. Duke of 102, 129, 130 

Letter to 3. 3-101, 141, 142, 146 

Meissen - ^2' ^^^ 

Memorizing of rules vs. development - -55, 109, 116 

"Menschen Erziehung " - ---1, '^6, 117, 141, 145 

Mental struggles - - ^^ 

Metaphysics ^0' ^^^ 

Methods of Education - ^^ 

Michaelis, Mme - 143, 146, 147 

Middendorf, Wilhelm 92, 93, 94, 100, 101, 103, 120, 121, 122, 

123, 124. 127, 128, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143 

Mineralogy 30, 87, 89 

professorship declined H^ 

Misapprehension of Froebel's motives -16' 

Model School at Frankfurt 51 

' • Moonstruck," Froebel so considered 105- 

Moral influence of the teacher --60, 83 

pride.- -^ 

Mother of Froebel 3. 44, 72 

" Mothers' Songs " "^6, 145 

Mugge, Johanna Caroline 140 

"Mutter- and Koselieder "_. -76. 145 

Nageli 81 

and Pfeifer's "Musical Course " - -81 

Name temporarily changed .46 

Napoleonic wars 91» 141 

reaction from 127 

Natural history -31, 32, 56, 87 

Natural History Society at Jena - - - .32 

Nature, communion with ^ 1^ 



1 62 Autobiography of Froebei. 



love of.... 24, 31, 38, 43, 48, 71, 74, 83, 86, 94, 96, 104, 105, 107 
as an educator _ 71 



Nature's work vs. man's 69 

Nature-Temple 12 

Nephews of Froebei. [See Froebei, Ferdinand, etc.] 

Netherlands, Froebei in the 95 

Neuhof. 24, 140 

Nieces of Froebei. [See Froebei, Albertine, etc.] 

Niederer. 57 

Note-taking 30 

Novalis's Works 45 

Number horizontally related 99 

Oberfalz... 42 

Oberweissbach 3, 105 

Object-teaching . 69 

Oken, Lorenz 102, 116 

"Isis" 102 

"On German Education " 141 

" On the Universal German Education at Keilhau". ..141 

Oriental tongues, study of .85 

Orphanage atBurgdorf.. 93, 135, 136, 137, 142 

Orthodox theology ..10, 11, 13, 14 

Orthography 62 

"Padagogik" 76 

Padagogium at Halle .45 

Paper, pricking of, suggested 75, 76 

Payne, Joseph . 144, 150 

Permutations of numbers 106 

Perrault, M 64 

Persian language, study of 85 

Personal chrracteristics of Froebei 13, 14, 15, 63, 67, 104, 111, 126 

of Pestalozzi 111 

Pestalozzi -_.20, 51-54, 57, 59, 69,70, 77-81, 83, 89, 141 

aims contrasted with Froebel's .111, 116, 129, 136 

" Buch der Mutter " ...136 

" Einertabelle " -.59 

general addresses 83 

school. [See Yverdon.] 



Index. 163 

Pfyffer, Eduard, - 81, 134, 135 

Philology, study of - 22, 85, 98, 111 

Philosophy, danger of - ^^ 

Physical backwardness - -18 

constitution - -^^ 

74- 

education. - - • - '* 

, on ^^ 
geography - '^' "^"^ 

Physics.. - 29, 87, 88, 89 

Phj^siography.- ^^' ^^ 

Plamann school °^ 

Plans for life-work - - -2^ 

Play a subject of study - - - - -^2 

for school boys - - - - - - -o" 

influence of. ' 

OK 

Political economy ""^ 

Politics ^^ 

Portugall, Baroness Adele von - -^^^ 

*' Positive instruction " - - - ^^ 

Praetorious, Miss - - - - - - ^^^ 

Pricking paper suggested - - - - '^^ 

7fi 
philosophy of - - ^ - - - < " 

" Principles, Aims, and Inner Life " .141 

Private tutorship "^"^ 

Professorship declined ^^2 

Pronunciation. 63, 64 

Prophetic sentiments - ^^ 

Proschke's "Fragments "... - -^^ 

Prussian, Froebel not a ^^ 

Public school-examination. -134 

Purpose of education. - - - "^ 

Quittelsdorf. -- --^^" 

Reaction from Napoleonic wars ^26 

Reading, teaching of *» '-•" 

Recognition by others. - - ''^ 

• • 70 

Relationship, education m '" 

Religious experiences.. 8, 9, 19, 21, 25, 35, 74 

instruction -- - --"4, 80, 119 

persecution • "^"^ 



164 Autobiography of I^roebel. 



Eepulsion to menial service 23 

" Rhenische Blatter " _139 

Rhine, Froebel crosses the 95 

Eichter, Jean Paul 70 

Rigidity in teaching .62 

Rocks a mirror of mankind 97 

Ronge, Madame 143, 151 

Rousseau's system of singing 56 

Rudolstadt 117. 142 

Prince of. 102, 138 

Princess Regent of 78, 80, 141 

" Samuel Lawhill". 22 

Sanskrit, study of 85 

Schaffner, Siegfried. 124 

Schelling. 116 

school of 40 

Schiller 35 

Schleiermacher 123 

Schmidt, Carl ...143 

Schmidt, Josias 55 

quarrels with Niederer 57 

Schnyder 130, 142 

Schopenhauer, Arthur .117 

Schrader, Madame 143 

Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt- .3 

Scientific extracts 36 

Scribbling distasteful. 3^ 

Self-consciousness .5, 11 

Self -development becomes objective 59 

Self -discipline ...21 

Seiler, George Frederick 70 

Senses exercised.. _ 10 

Set forms in teaching. 62 

Sex-life in plants 12 

Sexual conditions .11, 12 

Shirreff, Emily .144, 146, 151, 152 

Singing 56, 81 

Skeleton of man as type 31 



Index, 165 

Soldier, Froebel as a ..91-96,111, 144 

" Sonntags-Blatt," articles in. ...76 

Soul-cultivation 7 

emerging from chrysalis. - -49 

Sound method from fundamental principle 106 

Special education 33, 115 

Speech -tones 98 

Spelling, teaching of 20 

Spiritual endeavor at Yverdon. [See Religious experiences.] 

experiences 19 

Stadt-Ilm.... 18,44 

Step-brother of Froebel 15 

Step-mother of Froebel 4, 5, 27, 33 

Stimulation at Yverdon 79 

Stockwell Kindergarten College 143 

' ' Stone-language " 10 

Sturm 7 

Style of Froebel's writing 1, 117 

Subject vs. object 46 

" Sunday Journal " 142 

Surveying, study of 39, 40, 41 

Symbols to the inner eye 111 

Taking sides 13 

Teacher in the Plamann School. 89 

requirements of a 65 

Teachers' institutes at Burgdorf 136 

Teaching suggested .51 

"Teaching-plan" of Pestalozzi ..54 

" The Education of the Future " . 143 

" The New Education " an antithesis 116 

" The New Year 1836 demands a Renewal of Life " 142 

Theatrical performances 26, 33 

Theological disputations 13 

Third person in address 5 

" Thou," the German. 5 

Thuringian forest, the 3 

"To the German People" 141 

Tobler 56, 69 



1 66 Autobiography of Fi'oebel. 

Translators, aims of the 1 

Trustee of Froebel's property 28, 33 

Uckermark, the. 48 

Uncle of Froebel. [See Hoffman, Herr.] 

Unconscious tuition 9 

wealth of youth 71 

Unity 69, 70 

from clashing phenomena 105 

in Nature 98 

lacking at Yverdon 79 

of natural objects. 86 

of the universe 89 

" Universal German " education. 114, 141 

Universities neglect Froebel 117 

Vivacity of early impulses 7 

Voldersdorf, Herr von. _ 42, 140 

Von Dewitz-. 42, 43, 45, 140 

Holzhausen, Madame 110, 112, 141 

Llitzow, Baron 91, 141 

Marenholz-Bulow ...73, 142, 143 

Portugall, Baroness Adele 143 

Voldersdorf 42, 140 

Vowels, inner meaning of 99 

vs. consonants 98 

AValks with pupils 60,82 

Wartburg, the 50, 108 

Wartensee, the ...130, 13L, 142 

Was Christ Catholic or Protestant ? 134 

Weber's "Wilde Jagd"... 91 

Weimar, Grand Duke of 142, 143 

Weiss, Prof _ . 89, 95 

Wichard's "Froebel" 78 

Wieland 35 

Wife [first] of Froebel 123, 141 

Willisau, school at 93, 135-137, 142 

Winckelmann's " Letters on Art " 34 

Wollweider, Dr 45 

Works written by Froebel. 117, 141, 145, 146 



Index. 167 



Yverdon, Pestalozzi's school at 20, 53-57, 77-84, 141 

83 
lack of unity, etc - - - - 

wavering of ground principles °^ 

35 
Zendavista 

7 
Zollikof er 



36 91 





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